ACAI BERRY INTERNET SCAMS

[Doc Bunkum]

You've no doubt seen them, they're plastered all over the internet. Sites offering a "risk-free 14-day trial" of diet products made with the trendy açai berry.

CTV up here in Canada has just published a nice exposé of the scam...

Consumers warned of acai berry Internet scams

The companies offer samples of the products but then charge the customer's credit card month after month unless the consumer cancels the order.

In many cases, when customers try to contact the company and cancel their subscriptions, they are forced to sit for more than an hour on hold. Additionally, some consumers have complained of unauthorized charges on their credit card or bank accounts for products they did not order.

Several customers reported they were eventually forced to close bank accounts and cancel credit cards to stop the charges.

Further, as the consumer advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, points out, "there's no evidence whatsoever that diet pills made with açai (pronounced a-sigh-EE) will help flatten tummies, cleanse colons, enhance sexual desire, or perform any of the other commonly advertised functions".

What is interesting are the follow up comments by a Health Canada approved company owner who claims to have seen it all in his five years in business. He states...

In Canada, the Natural Health Product industry is regulated. This means that, unlike in the US, manufacturers and distributors of herbal products are all Health Canada approved or they are found, removed from market or even charged by RCMP.

The US is not regulated. It is a mess, filled with snake oil salesmen and even worse, criminals who dupe consumers by adding generic pharmaceuticals into their 'herbal' products.

The problem is that the US is a gutter for this type of crap. The US continue to degrade as 300 million people below us realize that there are many sheep in the world that will buy whatever they can 'describe' in a website.

If people in Canada knew that anyone and I mean anyone in the US can brew up a mixture in a bathtub, encapsulate it, throw it into some nice packaging and then sell it....believe me most wouldn't even attempt procuring these dangerous and stupid items.

Interesting.

From what I've seen and read, most of this guy's observations are pretty much bang on.

[wserra]

I know that you've been in the nutrition field for a while, Doc, so you probably know about the "Strange Foods With Anti-Aging and Health Claims" site at about.com. It doesn't go into a lot of detail, but gives summaries of the claims and the reality behind exotic stuff like goji, acai, noni and so forth. The results are what we know: well, they're not bad for you, but you get exactly the same nutrients from much less expensive stuff like orange juice.

If you want medical details, run a search on the stuff that interests you at PubMed. There is a recent study on acai, for example, in the seriously-named "Journal of agricultural and food chemistry" which concludes that acai does increase plasma antioxidants - just like applesauce.

[Doc Bunkum]

If you want medical details, run a search on the stuff that interests you at PubMed.

Ever use Scirus, Wes? - "the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web. With over 450 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information."

[wserra]

Ever use Scirus, Wes?

Yeah, Doc, I have, and it's useful. But professionally I deal with medical issues on nearly a daily basis, and for those there is nothing like PubMed (my office has a "Loansome Doc" account with a local med school library, so we can quickly get full text of the abstracted articles).