DALLAS — ‘Tis the season for peppermint, gingerbread, eggnog and all the other holiday delights that make New Year weight loss resolutions so popular.
There will no doubt be a run on gym memberships along with some catchy marketing of diet plans, fad workouts and supplements promising to whisk that fat away quick.
But history shows though the gimmicks may change, the cold hard truth stays the same.
A 1974 WFAA story archived in the SMU Jones Film Collection details how a slew of weight loss clinics were popping up in Dallas and then suddenly disappearing. It even caught the attention of the Texas Attorney General, who wanted to make sure consumers were not getting duped.
“We are concerned with the business end of it at this point. Making sure the consumer receives what he is being guaranteed,” the Texas Attorney General said.
Among the advertised promises in 1974: a diet to lose weight in just three days, a contraption allowing you to “pedal” the fat away and even being able to lose weight by taking a bath.
But as one doctor interviewed for the story put it: if it is too good to be true, it probably is.
“We gain weight and look for an instant cure. Then we are prone to fall for all the gimmicks in our society,” the doctor said.
One of the latest and not so greatest fads was the use of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, a hormone synthesized form the urine of pregnant women. Some clinics claimed injections of HGC when combined with a low-calorie diet could promote weight loss.
However, that claim, like many other weight loss promises in history, was misleading according to the doctor interviewed for the story.
“The agent that caused the patient to lose weight was not HCG but the 500 calories diet,” the doctor said.
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