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No, Green Coffee Won't Help You Drop 20 Pounds

by L. Turner

Congress did something useful! On Tuesday, legendary promoter of B.S. products Dr. Oz got schooled by a Senate panel for promoting false claims about diet fads and products that just don't work. The Senate subcommittee on consumer protection went after Dr. Mehmet Oz for using his eponymous show to trump up unverified claims about products that supposedly help with weight loss (spoiler alert: the products don't). What's worse, Oz then claimed he supported the products to give his audience hope, which is amazingly both condescending and totally immoral at the same time.

My job, I feel, on the show is to be a cheerleader for the audience when they don't think they have hope and they don't think they can make it happen. It jump-starts you. It gives you the confidence to keep going.

Um, no. Spending money on products that don't work just leaves people more broke.

The Senate panel, chaired by general boss Sen. Claire McCaskill, specifically brought the heat on Oz for his claims about supposedly magic green coffee beans, which one company claimed could help a person drop 20 pounds in four weeks and 16 percent of body fat in three months, according to USA Today. That company and others have since been sued by the Federal Trade Commission for making allegedly false claims about their products.

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Dr. Oz was called in because of what's called the 'Dr. Oz Effect': He promotes a product, and boom: sales skyrocket. McCaskill (generously) said Oz does "a lot of good" but questioned how strictly he adheres to scientific principles, CBS reported.

People want to believe you can take an itty-bitty pill to push fat out of your body...(but) the scientific community is almost monolithically against you.
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Ouch. Oz eventually agreed to start recommending products that have been tested and may actually work, rather than allowing unregulated supplement industries to sprout up around his claims. A member of the panel, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, said Oz could create a "recommended" list that he actually vets, the Associated Press reported.

I've been actively looking at that. With your suggestion and support, I think I'm going to do it and I think it'll do a lot to drain the swamp that we've created around this area.