Acai berry diet blogs are a scam

March 23, 8:05 PMWeight Loss ExaminerGail Gedan Spencer

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Weight Loss Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is warning consumers that those ubiquitous "blogs" bragging of miraculous weight loss from acai berry supplements are, in fact, a scam. (So ubiquitous that I'll bet there are ads for these diet scams right on this page.)

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you.

If you've clicked on more than one of those "random female name" diet "blogs" you've surely figured this out yourself. But apparently many people fall for the scammers who rope people into "free" samples of useless supplements that require a credit card number.

The lowly Brazilian berry had miracle properties bestowed on it from a few mentions on TV -- Oprah and the Rachael Ray Show specifically. Since then you've no doubt seen ads for "Oprah's miracle diet," "Rachel Ray diet" or "Doctor Oz's miracle." Turns out while the fruit has a decent amount of antioxidants, you can get far more antioxidants from ordinary fruits like blueberries, Concord grapes and black cherries. Winfrey, Oz and Ray have all publicly disassociated themselves from the sites. From the CSPI press release:

"When I logged on to my Hotmail account, I saw an ad about how Oprah lost weight on this diet, and I enrolled in what I thought would be a free trial," said M Chanel Pinkett, a graduate student from Gaithersburg, Md., who signed up for a free trial at AcaiBerryDetox.com, a site run by FWM Laboratories. Pinkett's "free" trial actually cost $174.26. After posting a complaint on complaintsboard.com, which has thousands of açai-related complaints, she told her story to Washington's WJLA-TV.

An exposé of the scam is in the April issue of CSPI’s Nutrition Action Healthletter.