corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15106

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

More weight loss worries
Pharmacy Daily (Australia) - registration required 2009 Feb 23
http://www.pharmacydaily.com.au


Full text:

PHARMACY weight loss systems are once again drawing attention, with the Weight Management Council Australia (WMCA) backing the recent CHOICE survey of the programs (PD 04 Feb) which raised concerns about the weight loss advice and support being provided to pharmacy customers.

“We are very concerned that consumers may be provided with unproven weight loss solutions, and incomplete advice that may not address the problem in a holistic and appropriately tailored manager,” said WMCA chairman Professor Gary Wittert.

He said the CHOICE report had found that “some diet plans sold in pharmacy, including shakes and
meal replacements, fail to deal effectively with the complex issues surrounding weight loss.

“A related and equally problematic issue is the promotion and sale of ‘medications’ for weight loss that are not required to be subjected to evaluation by the TGA,” Wittert added.

The WMCA administers a code of practice for its members, which include Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Fernwood, Trim-a-Weigh and Nestle Healthcare Nutrition.

Wittert said the code covers “all the minimum standards called for by CHOICE, but which the shakes
and meal replacements covered inthe CHOICE report, do not meet.”

He said the WMCA supported calls for regulation of the sector, but urged that “in the meantime
consumers should look for the WMCA accreditation symbol orcheck if an organisation is accredited before joining any weight loss plan.”

The Pharmacy Guild said criticism of pharmacy in the CHOICE report was unwarranted (PD 05 Feb) with president Kos Sclavos saying that community pharmacies “continue to be an ethical and accessible location for weight loss advice and programs.”

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








As an advertising man, I can assure you that advertising which does not work does not continue to run. If experience did not show beyond doubt that the great majority of doctors are splendidly responsive to current [prescription drug] advertising, new techniques would be devised in short order. And if, indeed, candor, accuracy, scientific completeness, and a permanent ban on cartoons came to be essential for the successful promotion of [prescription] drugs, advertising would have no choice but to comply.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963