To think diet pills shouldnt be advertised on tv?

[AGreatBigWorld]

I saw a Boots advert last night for some diet pills (cant remember the name!) A girl was moaning that she couldn't get into her holiday clothes so her friend gave her some diet pills!!!
There are enough people with eating disorders without advertising pills for slimming on the tv!

[Kpo58]

I do hate that there is so many fad diets and pills and stuff like that on TV and the internet.

I wish that they had cheap healthy grab food in the shops. When I was in Japan, the small corner shops had non sweetened drinks & rice balls in the fridge, etc. Here all you have is crisps and chocolate and highly sugared drinks.

[MumOnTheRunCatchingUp]

Losing weight doesn't have to lead to an eating disorder! And let's face it, there's a frightening amount of obesity in this country

[Lurkedforever1]

Yanbu. But I object for different reasons. Losing weight and maintaining it comes down to changing bad habits, but a certain group, either through lack of knowledge or deliberately kidding themselves, like to think there is a magic remedy requiring little or no effort. Whether that be low carbers cramming down half a deep fried cow a day, slimmers world members munching copious amounts of anything labeled sin free, cabbage soupers starving for a fortnight before they're back to eating ridiculous amounts of crap etc.

All diet pills do is encourage people to keep up their dodgy eating habits because a pack of pills will magic them slim.

[HelenaDove]

Im a Slimming World member who has lost ten stone and i certainly dont munch on anything just cos its syn free. I find keeping my sugar intake as low as possible is what works for me and too much syn free stuff has too much sugar in it. So i avoid them. Eg. mullerlight yoghurts and sw hifi bars dont pass my lips.

[AlwaysHopeful1]

Yabu It's a choice whether to buy it or not.

[thelifeofamber]

Wow Helena you have a radar for any thread involving weight loss.

[Birdsgottafly]

Should they not advertise Alcohol because of addictions?

Same with general food adverts.

I don't believe that we should put such controls in place, because a % of the population are stupid and misuse products.

[SomebodySedateMe]

Was it XLS Medical? I do think they should put a massive disclaimer at the bottom about them causing apocalyptic shits the runs. Had a friend who proudly took them before trying to sneakily eat a kebab. It didn't work out well for her.

[NinaSimoneful]

Yeah that's an awful ad. Is not about helping obese people find an effective, long term approach to successfully managing their weight, it's about a woman (who doesn't appear to have a weight problem) wanting to lose a couple of pounds quickly before she goes on holiday. That's not very responsible. This is actually a great example of the dangerous side of diet pills, the type of scenario that we should be trying to prevent, not encourage.

I remember when orlistat became available through pharmacies as 'Alli' and I thought that was a bit dangerous. They slightly tweaked Xenical and then removed the doctor from the situation. As in, to get and continue to get Xenical you would require regular doctor check ups to ensure your body was still coping okay with the medication. With Alli you are buying it from a pharmacy who makes more profit from continuing to sell it to you. And those fat binders can have awful side effects if not used properly and carefully.

[pigsDOfly]

This ad annoys me too. The idea that a perfectly reasonable looking slim young woman needs to take a pill that's going to mess with her gut in order to get ride of a few imaginary pounds isn't helping the country's obesity problems.

Likewise with the stupid diet programme on tv at the moment 'How to lose weight well' I think it's called, in which various overweight people are put on ridiculous fad diets to see if they work. Of course you're going to lose some weight if you've been stuffing your face for years and then you suddenly start eating some weird concoction of tiny amounts of something or other, or starving yourself for most of the day.

And then the person will be raving about how they've lost something like 11lbs over a four month period and saying how brilliant they think the diet is.

Same sort of thing as those pills. It's not helping people to manage their overeating in a realistic way and certainly isn't getting them on the road to healthy eating.

Agree, these things shouldn't be advertised on tv.

[OfaFrenchmind2]

YABU. Just because you do not like it, or some morons are misusing it, does not mean that it should be banned. Almost everything is bad for you if you do not use it correctly.
Should we ban adverts for food too?

[Lurkedforever1]

The difference is that with food and alcohol you can use them responsibly, whereas over the counter diet pills serve no purpose.

[pigsDOfly]

We ban cigarette advertising because cigarettes are harmful.

What value do these pill have, except to the manufacturers?

Can't see food, even poor quality food, bears any comparison to diet pills.

[specialsubject]

I remember the ads for Ayds - now whatever happened to those?

the only diet pills that will have an effect are those that make you incontinent of fat. None of the others work, and with sufficient disclaimers and careful wording there's no rule against advertising stuff that doesn't work. Otherwise there would be no anti-ageing cream ads!

Boots, H and B - big name doesn't mean high standards.

[HelenaDove]

lifeofamber despite that i dont think diet pills should be advertised on tv. Im old enough to remember when diet pills were only advertised in the back of the Sunday colour supplements back in the 80s.

And the reason i posted what i did earlier Amber is because ppl tend to assume that just because you attend SW then you must be evangelical about crap like their syn free system and muller light and many of us arent. Many of us have had to tweak it for it to work. The first time it worked for me fine doing it their way. The second time i had to do things slightly differently.

[thelifeofamber]

Well seeing as I was born in the 90s I wouldn't know about adverts in the 80s.

I however remember you hounding and following me previously though.

[80schild]

Completely agree and I would take it even further by banning supplement adverts as they also have, in most cases been shown to not work at all. I think the standard for advertising needs to be higher in that a dietary product should have to prove that a) it has been shown to work in a clinical trial (as in randomised double blind)
b) that it is not detrimental to health.

To many kooks get away with it because they are able to sell it as a food / supplement which is wrong.

[HelenaDove]

Im sorry if ive upset you previously Amber but i dont remember your username.

[HelenaDove]

Sorry i mean your username on this thread doesnt ring a bell.

[HelenaDove]

I posted because this thread came up in Active convos not because i have a radar though.