The-F-Word.org

MSNBC’s The Red Tape Chronicles reports on a shocking scandal in the dieting realm.

TV pitchman and best-selling diet book author Kevin Trudeau is being targeted by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC says advertising for Trudeau’s new book, Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About, is misleading and violates a court order prohibiting him from deceiving consumers in infomercials.

“In each of these infomercials Trudeau misrepresents that his protocol is easy and once completed, users can eat everything they want yet still maintain their weight loss,” the agency said in a legal brief filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago. “Contrary to these claims, his book’s weight loss program is arduous and requires severe food restrictions.”

Oh, the absolute shock. A diet company which distorts and misrepresents its snake oil cure for weight loss… the concept is so unbelievable. And I suppose the grandmother who says she eats chocolate every day and who her husband now calls his trophy wife is being disingenuous too, huh?

It’s very telling of a society when an obvious scam artist such as this is able to prey upon our collective fears of obesity to exploit and trick people into what amounts to a handful of magic beans.

Trudeau’s book describes a three- to six-week regimen that requires the dieter to take daily injections of a prescription drug (human chorionic gonadotropin or hCG, a hormone found in the urine of pregnant women) not approved for weight loss use by the FDA, the FTC said. Read Dr. Stephen Barrett’s review of hCG as a weight-loss tool here.

Readers are told to stick to a 500-calorie-per-day diet. And, according to some Amazon.com reviewers, they are also advised to get colonics every other day, use a colon cleanse product and down oodles of “natural” supplements daily (conveniently available for purchase from Trudeau’s website), sweat 20 minutes a day in an infrared sauna, receive as many massages as possible and exercise as if you were preparing for the Olympics.

Whew, and that’s just Phase 1! The FTC has made most of the book available in this PDF link here, Exhibit 12.

Yet Trudeau remains indignant, insisting that his book’s plan “permanently cures the condition of obesity,” with “no hunger…no exercise…and no surgery.”

“Amazingly, this medical breakthrough has been debunked, discredited, and suppressed by the American Medical Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and other medical establishments throughout the world,” righteously proclaims the book’s description.

Right. It’s just a simple case of a huge global medical conspiracy colluding against one convicted felon.

Trudeau’s personal lawyer David Bradford, defended his client and the infomercials with a paltry stab at the First Amendment, which he says guarantees Trudeau the right to say anything he wants in the book, and by extension, in the infomercial.

But Trudeau’s already used this defense and lost - big. In Sept. 2004, after after having been charged repeatedly with false advertising, Trudeau became bound by an FTC consent agreement under which he agreed to pay a $2 million penalty and be banned from appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public, except for “truthful infomercials for books, newsletters, and other informational publications.”

The FTC is asking the court to find Trudeau in contempt for violating the previous court order and will pursue “consumer redress.”

Read more about Trudeau’s previous run-ins with the FTC in an Salon.com article here or at InfomercialWatch.org here.

Note to FTC: One diet mogul down, thousands more to go.