FDA Weight Loss Hypocrisy

The market for FDA weight loss drugs is expected to reach 2 billion dollars by the end of 2010. That is nothing compared with the target of the FDA, which is the entire 55 billion dollar per year industry for weight loss products and services. Regulating the weight loss industry is all about money and little to do with weight loss or even good health.

The FDA Weight Loss Industry

Numerous prescription drugs, surgical procedures, and medical devices are on the FDA weight loss approved list. The pharmaceutical industry and mainstream medicine control them through patents and regulations by the FDA. It is a small portion of a huge industry.

Unfortunately for Big Pharma, 70 percent of the efforts by Americans to lose weight are through self help diets, supplements, physical training, etc. This is an untapped market that far exceeds the estimated 2 billion dollars that are expected for prescription weight loss drugs by the end of 2010.

Why Drugs And Surgery Are Poor Choices

The main premise behind many approved weight loss drugs and procedures is to limit either total calories or calories from fats. This approach proceeds in complete ignorance of more than a century of scientific research that shows why excess calories, including those from fat, are not the cause of overweight.

Surgical procedures that cut out or limit the amount of the stomach that can absorb food merely serve to reduce the amount of incoming calories. Such procedures are not a permanent solution to overweight. However, they are expensive and highly profitable.

Myth Of The Human Calorie Furnace

Calories in, calories out. That is the dogma of weight loss. Keep them balanced and you will stay the same weight. Take in too many calories and you will gain weight. Reduce calorie consumption or increase exercise to use more calories and you will lose weight. All of these invoke the concept of the human body as a furnace.

This concept is dead wrong. This means that weight loss drugs and surgery, or any other approach to weight loss that rests on this concept, will fail. Rebound weight gain and general poor health are the result.

Where To Find Truths Based On Science

Overweight is a complicated issue that entails much more than calories. People who are truly serious about maintaining healthy weight, along with all other indicators of good health, must become acquainted with the really good scientific research on this topic. Unfortunately, not all published scientific research is good. Indeed, some is downright lousy.

Fortunately, researchers sometimes compile the best information on a topic and put it into the form of a book. In the subject of weight management and health, right now the two best books on the market are the following:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, by Gary Taubes.

and

The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long Term Health, by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II.

Both of these books are serious research summaries, not for the faint of heart. Both of them have already suffered their naysayers from mainstream medicine, some of whom have been downright nasty. This is only logical, because these two books represent serious threats to the money stream to Big Pharma. Moreover, they both expose the FDA weight loss hypocrisy for what it really is.

If people took to heart the advice in these books and changed their lifestyles accordingly, two consequences would arise: 1) people would be healthier than ever; 2) it would undermine several industries that make money by marketing unnecessary drugs and surgical procedures and the most unhealthful processed food in human history.

Reading and understanding the messages in these two books may be bad for the economy. However, they are clearly the best for your health. It is your choice.

All the best for true health and fitness,

Dr. D