Here is the lead to "The Great Diet Scam," which appeared in Self in December 1992:

The Great Diet Scam

Commercial diet programs may be hazardous to your health – and they don’t make you thinner

By Robin Marantz Henig

If you are like the vast majority of American women, you think you need to lose weight – even if an objective observer says otherwise. If you’re like 50 percent of women, you are, in fact, probably already on a diet. And if you’re like almost 8 million men and women across the country, you are enrolled at one of the commercial diet centers that are the heart of the $30 billion weight-loss industry.

The lure of commercial programs is the promise of quick results achieved under the guidance of competent professionals. "We succeed where diets fail you," pledges Nutri/System, making an obvious pitch to repeat, or "yo-yo," dieters. "The weight-loss professionals," Diet Center calls itself, advertising tales from celebrities of dramatic weight loss. But such advertisements are deliberately misleading, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has been investigating the industry for the past two years. Nutri/System has no proof that its program is any more successful than other diet plans, since no one in the industry keeps decent follow-up records. And the only "professional" thing about the staff at Diet Center is their white lab coats. The organization does not require its employees to have professional degrees in counseling, nutrition or physiology.

Since 1990, U.S. Representative Ron Wyden of Oregon has been blasting the industry for what he calls its rampant "hucksterism." Among the transgressions uncovered by his Committee on Small Business:

Misleading testimonials from people who have lost a great deal of weight, even though they represent only a small minority of those who begin a program.

Questionable statistics regarding long-term success, when none of the companies keeps follow-up records either on those who finish the program or on those who drop out somewhere along the way.

Deceptive before-and-after pictures, which sometimes use computer enhancement to simulate what clients would look like if they achieved their desired weights.

Inaccurate price lists, which show only "initiation" fees and fail to itemize such hidden costs as the mandatory purchase of that program’s prepackaged foods.

Outright quackery in the form of pills such as the "Fat Magnet," which is said to draw excess fat from the body; "Dream-Away" diet pills, whose makers claim you can take a few before bed and wake up slimmer; or gadgets like "diet sunglasses," said to project an appetite-suppressing image on the retina.

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