The latest in diet pills brought you by Big Pharma is something called "alli" - with a little horizontal line over the "i" - which I cant reproduce here because I am an html midget.
Sooo, in addition to all the usual promises (although this one -surprise, surprise - claims to be different than all the rest) alli is not simply a pill but a pill with a plan...but all that aside, lets just take a look at its treatement effects* ... lifted from one of their print ads:
'...if you eat too much fat you may experience treatment effects (emphasis in original), including loose or more frequent stools, an urgent need to go to the bathroom, or gas with an oily discharge.'
Gas with an oily discharge?????!!!!! Now wait a minute - it's bad enough having to cut one during a business meeting and ferverntly hoping it wont be a SBD, but piling on the worry that there might be some kind of weird french fry-like stain seeping through the back of the Liz Claiborne and possibly onto the upholstery? Mais non!
Come on sheeple - is doing a little bit more exercise and eating a bit less so much worse than taking a pill that gives one the runs and oily farts? Has this super-size nation gone so low down that there really is a market of people willing to have skid marks in their undies just so they dont have to work to get rid of the excess?
Wow. I can only imagine the groaning and swearing when the ad team got handed the alli specs. But mastery of the glitz, power of the message - alli copy gets one all lathered up about taking one's weight under one's own control (as if getting morbidly obese** in the first place was just an act of god), and in a sort of Nike-esque "Just Do It" kind of fervour distracts from those important caveats (loose stool et al) with catchy visuals and patter. No skid marks there, just cute puppies and can-do women!
*a less startling word perhaps than the troublesome "side effects"
** I can only assume it's those with one leg in the grave that would even consider taking this snake oil
2 comments:
Heh, heh, heh. Skid marks. Back when the chemicalfood companies were first experimenting with fake fat, I accidentally picked up a bag of cheating chips. (Yeah, I eat healthy. But once in awhile I like me some chips.) Anyway, I didn't notice the small print. I could tell from the first bite something was wrong. "Uncontrolled anal discharge." Huh? And this is a snack food. Sheeple is right.
One word, Flic: Olestra.
It was a previous 'miracle' of a fake fat, and had some serious 'treatment effects' as well.
And what kind of little horizontal line? Angling up or down?
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