Thu 11 Oct 2012
Dropped on the Head
Posted by anaglyph under Daft Advertising, Food & Drink, Hokum, ShooTag, Skeptical Thinking, Stupidity, WooWoo
[7] Comments
Faithful Acowlytes! Have you put on a few pounds over the winter? ((Antipodean seasons are in effect here on TCA.)) Has your flat stomach been Autocorrected into a flab stomach? Would you like your former Olive Oyl profile back once more? Well then friends, let me tell you all about the miraculous LifeChange Diet, featuring amazing ‘bioresonance’ drops! Yes, these wondrous drops in conjunction with ‘a strict low calorie/low GI diet’ just about guarantee that you’ll shed those unwanted kilos in no time.
But first, before we get too excited, we might examine the above magazine clipping (thoughtfully sent in by Cissy Strutt) with the TCA Bullshit Magnifier™ to see what it throws up.
First of all, you might be forgiven for thinking that popstar-cum-clotheshorse Carmen Electra has anything at all to do with the LifeChange Diet. She doesn’t. Well, not the LifeChange Diet being promoted in the text by Sydney naturopath Danielle Berends, anyway. But maybe that’s my mistake. The credit does say Carmel Electra, so perhaps it’s Carmen’s lesser known twin sister doing the promoting. You might also be forgiven for thinking that the drops Carmel is talking about have anything to do with the drops that Danielle is hawking. They don’t. At least, if they are the same product, they don’t make a big thing of it on the LifeChange Diet website, and probably for good reason: HCG Platinum Drops are not in the good books of the US Food & Drug Administration, who have found the drops to be in violation of numerous FDA standards and that ‘…there is no evidence that they are generally recognized as safe and effective for their intended uses.’
But hey, it’s not hard to accidentally put the wrong photo and caption on your text, right? Maybe these ones were meant to go on the story ‘Bogus Weight Loss Drugs promoted by Idiot Celebrity’ and there was a bit of a mixup. It’s easy to see how that could happen.
So, what then does the LifeChange Diet website have to say about these awesome homeopathic drops. Let’s look at the Bioresonance page (because we just know that’s gonna be good):
The LifeChange Diet combines an easy to follow structured diet program with bioresonance technology, in the form of specially formulated bioresonance drops.
But what is bioresonance technology? That’s a very common question.
Bioresonance technology was introduced by German scientists in the 1970’s. Its foundation is based around the body’s energy system.
In bioresonance therapy, the transmission and receipt of electromagnetic frequencies is used to identify and support your energetic status.
All the cells in your body emit and communicate via electromagnetic frequencies. In a healthy body, this communication is free and the body functions as it was designed to do.
Well, I agree that ‘What is bioresonance technology?’ is probably a common question from those hearing of this scheme. Indeed, I asked it myself, although it was more along the lines of ‘Jesus H Christ, what the fuck is bioresonance technology?’ But, the internets being right at our fingertips & all, it’s only a moment’s work to fire up our favourite Search™ engine and plug in ‘bioresonance’ and ‘German scientists’. The very first result we get is this Wikipedia ((Support Wikipedia! Donate!)) article on ‘bioresonance therapy‘ which begins with the explanation that ‘Bioresonance therapy is a pseudo-scientific medical concept…’ I guess that wasn’t much of a surprise. Bioresonance was ‘discovered’ in 1977 by Franz Morell who, after seeing a Scientology E-Meter, created his own version of it, along with a whole heap of baloney to explain its supposed working mechanism. Needless to say this centers principally around the vagueness of concepts like ‘electromagnetic frequencies’ and ‘energy flow’ so beloved of woo peddlars across the globe, a club of whom we must consider LifeChange a card-carrying member.
Simply put, the wondrous drops that the LifeChange Diet promotes as part of its weight-loss scheme are nothing more than magic water. Yet again.
I guess you all saw it, right, at the beginning of this post? The diet promoted by this racket – ‘a strict low calorie/low GI’ food intake – by itself will guarantee that you lose weight. The magic drops are total bullshit, and I say these people know it.
Electra-fying
Caveat emptor, second oldest profession.
Let’s see if there is legal way to get these people hooked up with the doubters from the previous post.Stop! I said legal!
I’m all for spectacle.
I am going to read the new Nobel prize winners research on how cells communicate one of these days, but I don’t think it had much to do with electromagnetic frequencies. Libelous! Furthermore, since our bodies are mostly not human cells anyway, I think it us even further a breach of science. Bacteria, at least, communicate via quorum sending (thanks, TED!), and this also has nothing to do with frequencies in the EM field. D-d-d-double fail!
Hey, did you hear the one about the homeopath who died the other day? He overdosed when he forgot to take his daily aspirin… -James Randi
Seems legit to me. Well, OK, not even close to legit. Downright sleazy and wrong, in fact.
But still… maybe it’s just that I’m at home with the flu and feverish, but I’d be willing to bet some good money that drinking a zero calorie placebo will, in tests, help you slim faster than not drinking one.
Not only that, but I’d also bet some seen-better-days money that, the more you spend on your placebo, the more reliable your slimming will be.
I’d even bet some probably-needs-a-bit-of-a-spanking money that this will hold true *even if everyone knows it’s just a placebo*.
We are just weird like that.
I keep meaning to do a post about the Placebo effect, sometime. It is a fascinating thing in its own right and is greatly misunderstood in many ways.
Just to point out, though, that the ‘drops’ in this story are completely irrelevant to the diet. The diet is a low calorie & low GI food intake, with an accent on protein – you’d lose weight doing that anyway, but there is some good data to suggest that your body does not tolerate this kind of thing very well. There is a profound ‘bounce-back’ effect for many people after they finish the diet, and some people actually end up heavier a few months after the diet than when they started.
The placebo effect in action here would be simply to fool you into thinking you’re not hungry. This is in fact an excellent situation for a placebo to be effective, since there is a large mental component in the ‘hunger’ response, especially in relatively well-fed people.
On the whole, though, the best strategy for losing weight is simple – you eat less, you make sure that what you do eat has a large quotient of fresh vegetables and fruit, and you exercise moderately. And you do it for a year. But it’s hard to make money out of a scheme like that – no-one wants to be told they will have to work hard & consistently to achieve control over their body weight. They all want the magic drops.