Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15002

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Burke K.
Weight-loss advisers raise concern
The Sydney Morning Herald 2009 Feb 4
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/weightloss-advisers-raise-concern/2009/02/03/1233423223164.html

Full text:

Pharmacy employees are promoting and selling a vast array of unproven weight-loss products despite “grossly inadequate” knowledge, training and accountability, a Choice investigation has warned.

Sales assistants refashioned as qualified weight-loss consultants after only a few hours’ training by the products’ manufacturers and distributors were unqualified to factor in crucial details such as medical history, exercise patterns and alcohol intake when assessing overweight and obese consumers’ needs, the consumer advocate group says, after a panel of expert nutritionists and dieticians analysed the investigation’s findings.

The panel singled out two weight-loss programs sold through chemists – Tony Ferguson Weight Loss and Ultra Lite Weight Management – as “disgraceful and irresponsible” for being prepared to sell their programs for the use of overweight children as young as 10 years old.

More than 20 pharmacies were “shadow shopped” by Choice and then the findings analysed by the independent expert panel. For half the programs, the consultants had only between three to six hours’ basic training before signing up “patients” to weight-loss programs costing more than $40 a week after an additional joining fee of up to $30 was paid.

A spokesman for Choice, Christopher Zinn, said a national accreditation system was needed, including a minimum standard of training.

Because the majority of the weight-loss programs rely on meal substitutions, they are classified as food instead of complementary medicines, which are listed with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

A review seeking to tighten the TGA’s requirements for complementary medicines has dragged on for the past 18 months.

Meanwhile, some weight-loss product manufacturers are refashioning their complementary medicines as meal replacements in anticipation of the expected tightening of regulations, Dr Ken Harvey, from La Trobe University’s School of Public Health in Melbourne, warned yesterday.

The national president of the Pharmacy Guild, Kos Sclavos, said yesterday pharmacists had a major role to play in dealing with the obesity problem in an ethical and responsible way.

“Meal replacements are not scheduled medicines and are widely available from a range of retail outlets,” he said.