People wasting billions of dollars on quack health food and diet products

This should be another one of those "No shit, Sherlock" moments for these idiots who think "obesity" is a disease. And why are people wasting those billions of dollars? Because you morons keep telling fat people that being fat is a disease that is going to shorten their life and ruin their health. Because the media keeps touting how being "thin" is the only way to be healthy, happy, rich, smart, beautiful, popular, successful, and live forever.

Professor Lean from the University of Glasgow, is hopeful that a new European Union (EU) Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices, adopted this year in UK, will finally protect vulnerable consumers who are tricked into to buying useless food products or supplements in attempts to combat their disease.

"Obesity" is NOT a disease, asshats. It's never been a disease, and just because you label it a disease doesn't make it one. From Webster's Dictionary: disease 1-obsolete-trouble 2-a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs the performance of a vital function : sickness : malady 3-a harmful development (as in a social institution - the various diseases of civilization). Fat is not trouble, fat does not generally impair performance of vital functions (witness all the fat people who are still alive even after being told their fat is going to kill them), and despite what the diet industry/big pharma/the medical community would have you believe, fat is not a harmful development in civilization, since it's been around since civilization has existed.

Unlike medicines, food products that are marketed for health reasons are not subject to the same stringent research trials and control, and consumers are often misled.

Often misled? How about misled every fucking day of their lives! Misled by the media, misled by doctors, misled by pharmaceutical companies, and most of all, misled by all those companies pushing their diets that they know don't work, they know have never worked, and they know will never work (other than to put billions of dollars in their pockets) for safe and permanent weight loss.

It is already illegal for unsubstantiated claims to be made about the composition or nutritional function of food products, eg. that they are low in fat, high in fibre or help lower cholesterol, and it is also illegal to claim that a food can treat or prevent any disease—including obesity. However, many unsubstantiated health claims are still made, or implied. Misleading marketing can be found within brand names and images on packaging, in shelf or shop names, or on websites which suggest that products help weight control, are slimming, or are "Health Foods", when there is no evidence.

No shit, Sherlock, and WTF are you doing to stop those claims from being made? Namby-pamby little rules, like making them put teeny tiny print at the end of ads saying "Results not typical". Results not typical, my aching ass. "Results not happening at all, ever, for the majority of people, so you're wasting your money on this" should be more like it.

He points out that, of all the hundreds of products currently on sale to help people lose weight, only energy-restricted diets and exercise, the drugs orlistat and sibutramine, and in some cases bariatric surgery, are safe, effective and cost-effective. The remainder, he says, are either not effective or not safe.

Well, let's see now. If you go by evidence-based statistics, those energy-restricted diets and exercise don't work for safe, permanent weight loss. If you go by evidence-based statistics, orlistat and sibutramine aren't all that helpful unless you only have small amounts of weight to lose (like less than 20 lbs) and they give you the added benefit of possibly shitting yourself in public (orlistat) or losing maybe 24 pounds in 6 months and staying on the drug for life in order to keep those 24 pounds from ever coming back (sibutramine, not to mention that you have to stay on the reduced-calorie diet and exercise like mad for the rest of your life). And I'm not even going to address the success of WLS, we all know how successful and safe that is..........NOT.
So yeah, Professor Lean, it's idiots like you that created this panic and pushed people into spending billions of dollars on quack remedies that don't work, have never worked, and will never work, and you think you have a solution? I don't think so, since it's people just like you who came up with all the solutions you say are "quackery". And the solutions that you think work? Well, guess what, dickweed, they don't work any better than the quackery you're railing about. So go join the medical community, big pharma, and the diet industry in their little cesspool and leave fat people the fuck alone. With friends like you, we certainly don't need any enemies.

ETA: H/T to petulant at Shakesville for the link