Unilever, the parent company of SlimFast, is seeing its profits plummet
as a result of the success of the Atkins Diet. It's a good thing. I have
long thought that the SlimFast line of products was a complete sham --
the #1 ingredient in many SlimFast powders is refined white sugar, and
no nutritionist in their right mind would claim that consuming table
sugar instead of a meal would help people lose weight. In my opinion,
SlimFast has been fraudulently marketed to consumers with highly
misleading labeling, and it should have been outlawed years ago. It
takes a real distortion of reality to make a product out of sugar and
water, label it "SlimFast" and imply that people will lose weight by
drinking it.
Fortunately, consumers are wising up. (Good for you!)
SlimFast sales are plummeting. Today, the only people I still see buying
SlimFast are the obese, which is a pretty good indicator that the
product doesn't work. People who know anything about health wouldn't
touch the product.
This is all bad news for Unilever, which appears
to be just another greedy corporation that would apparently sell
anything to anyone if they could make a buck doing it. Now this is pure
opinion, so you Unilever lawyers can go bark up a different tree, but I
believe that SlimFast actually promotes both obesity and diabetes. Any
product made primarily with table sugar would have the same effect.
Nutritionally speaking, SlimFast isn't very different from drinking a
Coke.
We can thank the Atkins Diet -- and all the low-carb diets
like Sugarbusters and the South Beach Diet -- for educating the public
on the importance of avoid refined sugars and processed food
ingredients. Now, people are actually reading the ingredients labels.
And their eyes are popping out of their sockets when they learn that
SlimFast has sugar listed as its #1 ingredient! Bizarre, huh? So the
accelerating market failure of SlimFast can only mean good news for the
health of American consumers. The fewer people who buy and consume
SlimFast, and the more who avoid refined carbohydrates, the fewer people
will be diagnosed with diabetes and obesity.
Then again, that's all
my opinion. I'm willing to bet that Unilever will have a different
opinion. From their point of view, "SlimFast is good for you!" There's a
great book entitled, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! that might be worth
reading if you want to know how corporations manage to turn the truth
upside down in order to sell dangerous products to consumers.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has created several downloadable courses on survival and preparedness, including his widely-downloaded course on personal safety and self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, martial arts and organic gardening. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
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