As per the latest study by Persistence Market Research (PMR), the global weight loss dietary supplements market is anticipated to witness healthy growth. The market is likely to register 6.0% CAGR throughout the forecast period 2017-2026. The global weight loss dietary supplements market is also estimated to bring in US$ 37,177.6 million revenue by 2026 end.
With obesity becoming a global health concern, weight loss continues to be one of the most focused areas. Hence, increasing number of companies are coming up with the new products in weight loss supplements. The increasing consumption and demand for weight loss dietary supplements, regulations on the production of these supplements along with ingredients used are also gaining traction in various countries. The government in various countries are also focusing on the quality and quantity of ingredients used and if any of these ingredients can have severe side-effects, affecting the health of the consumers negatively.
Increasing use of Natural and Organic Ingredients in the Weight Loss Dietary Supplements
The negative effects of being obese and overweight are resulting in the increasing use of weight management products. Consumers are also adopting weight loss supplements in forms of pill, liquid, and powder. Hence, with the increase in the use of these supplements, manufacturers are also trying to produce safer products, thereby using organic and natural ingredients and plant-based ingredients. Among various ingredients, green tea extract is considered as one of the most popular and safest ingredients in the weight loss dietary supplements. Similarly, Garcinia cambogia is also being considered as an ingredient in the weight loss supplements. However, these ingredients have been reported to have adverse effects like a headache, constipation, UTI. Hence, there has been an increase in the investment in the research on other organic ingredients that can be used to produce weight loss supplements.
Global Weight Loss Dietary Supplements Market: Segmental Insights
The global weight loss dietary supplements market includes various segments such as end-user, form, ingredients, distribution channel, and region. Based on the form, the market is categorized into powder, liquid, and soft gell/pills. Soft gell/pills are expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. By the end of 2026, soft gell/pills are expected to exceed US$ 18,500 million revenue.
Based on the end-user, the segment consists of men, women and senior citizen. Among these, women are expected to be the largest users of weight loss dietary supplements. Women segment as the end-user is estimated to create an incremental opportunity of more than US$ 7,900 million between 2017 and 2026.
By Distribution Channel, pharmacies drug store is expected to emerge as the largest distribution channel for the weight loss dietary supplements. Pharmacies drug store is estimated to account for more than one-third of the revenue share by the end of 2017.
Based on the ingredients, the segment consists of amino acids, vitamins minerals, botanical supplements, and others. Vitamins minerals are expected to emerge as one of the largest used ingredients in the weight loss dietary supplements. By the end of 2026, vitamins minerals are estimated to exceed US$ 16,900 million revenue.
Region-wise, the market is categorized into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Latin America, Japan, and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among the given regions, North America is expected to dominate the global weight loss dietary supplements market throughout the forecast period 2017-2026.
A Western Australian man has told how he lost his liver after taking popular weight-loss products widely available in protein powders and supplements.
Matthew Whitby was two weeks from death and needed an emergency liver transplant after taking a protein powder containing green tea extract and a supplement with garcinia cambogia — a tropical fruit used in weight-loss supplements.
Green tea extract is a concentrated form of the popular tea and is favoured for its purported weight loss properties and anti-oxidant effects.
But in some susceptible individuals, doctors say it can cause liver failure even in moderate doses, and has been reportedly linked to dozens of cases of liver failure around the world.
There have also been cases of liver damage linked to garcinia cambogia.
‘Close to death’
Like many young men, Matthew started working out to get fit and gain strength. He didn’t think it could cost him his life.
Mr Whitby was so close to death after taking a protein powder and supplement containing the extract that he had to accept a donated liver with Hepatitis B.
The young father will have to take a raft of medications for the rest of his life and has spoken out to warn others.
“I didn’t think something you could buy online or just over the counter did the damage that it did to me,” he said.
“They didn’t say anything about ‘could cause liver failure’.”
Taxpayers will have to foot the estimated $150,000 bill for Mr Whitby’s liver transplant, yet Australian products containing green tea extract typically contain no warnings.
And, because green tea is technically a food, it often falls into a regulatory mine field.
Products which make a therapeutic claim, like the garcinia cambogia supplement are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
But in products such as protein powder, they are usually regulated through Food Standards Australia and New Zealand with enforcement by state health authorities.
The TGA said it was investigating the case as a part of a wider review, “the results of which will be made public if there is sufficient evidence of a safety issue to warrant further action”.
Mr Whitby’s doctors have said the green tea extract is the most likely culprit for his liver failure, but said as there are many ingredients in supplements and powders, it was hard to make a definitive call.
The case has been documented in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Experts said it was still safe for consumers to drink green tea in moderate amounts, with problems more likely in the tea’s concentrated form.
Rising liver damage linked to herbal remedies
Mr Whitby’s doctors at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth said they were not surprised by what happened to the healthy 27-year-old.
Liver specialist Professor Gary Jeffrey works in the liver transplant centre of Western Australia and said doctors were seeing what they believe is more liver damage from herbal remedies and herbal extracts.
“We would during the year have one or two people with liver failure due to herbal remedies,” he said.
“This would be the most severe form we’ve seen. Most of the other cases we’ve seen have resolved spontaneously.”
While the question of warnings was up to regulators, Professor Jeffreys said he personally would like to see a product insert which listed the benefits and risks of the supplement.
“People who have normal liver function can develop liver problems with herbal extract toxicity,” he said.
“There have been a number of countries around the world that have removed slimming agents from the market because of the increased rate of liver damage.”
The TGA said one of the products Mr Whitby consumed was a protein powder called HydroxyBurn Elite supplied by BSc.
There is nothing illegal about supplying products containing green tea extract and it is an ingredient approved for sale in Australia.
The product is no longer available on the market.
Experts think the liver failure related to green tea extract can occur because of catechins, the same element that makes it potentially beneficial, specifically a sub-group of catechins called EGCG.
“The exact mechanism of the green tea extracts on the liver isn’t actually known but it can cause, at its worst, liver death,” Professor Jeffrey said.
Clinical pharmacologist Professor Ric Day from St Vincent’s Hospital said cases like Mr Whitby’s were known as “idiosyncratic” reactions and could happen with virtually any medication.
“It is very rare and it seems like some individuals have a particular sensitivity,” he said.
“So it’s a lot of bad luck generally but the protection is to make sure you’ve got a reputable source of the drug, that you’re not taking more than you should, you’re following the instructions.
“A general principle is more might not be better but it might be more toxic in those that are more sensitive.”
In a statement the company said it was not aware of the case and the TGA had not notified them of the adverse event.
“In the 14 years we have been producing protein powders with added herbal extracts we have not been notified of any adverse events,” the statement said.
“The individual was notably taking a garcinia cambogia supplement as well, which was not our product. Based on 14 years of well tolerated use of our product range, we will not be reconsidering our use of green tea extract.”
The garcinia cambogia supplement Mr Whitby took was from a site with an Australian office address in its contact details.
Garcinia cambogia is based on a tropical fruit and gained worldwide popularity after being controversially endorsed by celebrity television doctor Dr Oz.
It has been implicated in some cases of liver damage around the world, and two liver-based adverse reactions in Australia but experts said there was less evidence of its potential risk.
Steve Scarff, the Australian Self-Medication Industry Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Director, said consumer safety was “paramount” and the industry took adverse event reports seriously.
He said Australia had a world-class system for regulating complementary medicines.
“There has been a number of reviews of green tea extract and the conclusion is that it’s a low-risk herbal substance,” he said.
“There are processes in place to review the safety of ingredients and products.”
Who is the regulator?
A spokeswoman for the TGA said the protein powder was not on its register of Therapeutic Goods and some sports supplements were regulated as foods, rather than therapeutic goods.
“The TGA is continuing to investigate the report it received relating to the BSC protein powder and liver failure as part of a larger investigation into this issue, noting that the TGA has not received any other reports of liver failure with this product,” she said.
“The results will be made public if there is sufficient evidence of a safety issue to warrant further action.”
Normally the most annoying thing you’ll see in the replies to a viral tweet are the people firing off creepy and/or rude comments to the writer. But if you scroll down far enough, one increasingly common phenomenon you’ll find is a link to a sketchy website trying to sell you garbage.
Apparent scammers have recently been using seemingly empowering, relatable tweets to go viral, then threading them into a crafted story whose conclusion is a link to sign up for, say, a three-month weight-loss teatox program.
On September 15, a now-defunct account with the username @ashleyeats tweeted the following: “you ever see a girl in denial about being in a toxic relationship and want to grab her by her face and tell her how much better her life will be once she comes to her senses :/ that shit is the absolute worst to just stand by and watch after you’ve been through it all yourself…”
The thread, which managed to get an astronomical 83,000 retweets, continues for another 30 posts, weaving a story about “Ashley’s” struggle with her ex-boyfriend, who’d control her actions and force her to eat in front of him, thereby causing her to gain weight. It includes dozens of photos and videos documenting the weight fluctuations of a woman who is presumably Ashley, who is also presumed to be in an abusive relationship.
But as the story continues, the focus is more and more on Ashley’s weight loss progress, which she claimed was due to a mysterious program she’d seen floating around social media. She then includes videos of a woman reviewing a weight loss program, though the women in the photos looks suspiciously different from the previous photos.
A cached version of the since-deleted viral thread.Twitter
That’s because neither of the women is Ashley at all — most of the photos had been stolen from a cam girl on a fetish site, while the videos of the woman reviewing the shakes were ripped from a YouTuber named Vanessa Blanco.
Despite the initial positive response (Twitter tends to reward a weight-loss narrative), users were pretty quick to realize once they got to the final few tweets and clicked the links that it had all been a scam to sell Therma Trim, a shady diet supplement.
It’d be easy to dismiss the @ashleyeats thread as just another part of the world we live in today, one where celebrities use their influence to shill dubious products all the time, and conclude that we simply have to be more aware about how viral marketing practices target us. But just because both of those things are true doesn’t mean this type of advertising doesn’t have serious consequences. And it isn’t the first time this has happened.
The untold consequences of viral scam threads
The account @ashleyeats may have been suspended, but the story isn’t over for the cam girl from whom she stole the photos, which provided the bulk of the emotional potency in the thread. The model, who specializes in feederism, a fetish involving eating and weight gain, spoke to Motherboard under the condition of anonymity. She said that not only was she outed as a sex worker to her friends and family, but that her weight loss was in actuality a result of anorexia and cocaine abuse.
“The whole situation has really freaked with my sense of privacy and paranoia, because this fetish is VERY private to me and taboo to the rest of the world really. I’ve had multiple of my friends send me the thread and I had to tell them about what I’ve been doing and all in all, it’s really embarrassing,” she said.
Plus, the entire story rests on a likely fake account of emotional abuse as a way to sell a product that is, in all likelihood, a dangerous laxative. As others on Twitter have noted, the thread is also deeply fatphobic and preys on young women’s anxieties about weight. And yet, these reasons likely contributed to how far the thread was able to travel.
The @ashleyeats account was suspended and the thread has been deleted, but as Motherboard noted, numerous other accounts, such as @ashleysjourney, sprouted up in its place and tweeted the exact same thread, gaining thousands of retweets before they too were taken down.
A similar thread went viral last month, when a user named @chaobella tweeted “i love when dudes from high school hit me up like ‘i don’t know why we didn’t talk when we were younger’ umm because y’all made fun of me? a thread…”
This one uses a similar tone as that of @ashleyeats — it’s presumed to be written by a woman who, once upon a time, had experienced bullying or abuse, and seems like she’s interested in helping others. In both cases, the “twist” is that bullying or abuse no longer happens to her because she lost a dramatic amount of weight. And it too ended up using stolen photos, in a scam to sell Nutra-SX Garcinia Cambogia, another sketchy weight loss pill.
People have always attempted to capitalize on viral success
To be fair, social media posts that happen to go viral are almost always met with a reply from the original poster with a link to something they want to get more eyeballs on — their Instagram handle, YouTube page, or, as is so often parodied, their Soundcloud account. The difference is that in the cases of @ashleyeats and @chaobella, they’re threads that are specifically constructed to go viral, but are done under false pretenses using predatory tactics.
There can, however, be a little bit of a gray area here. Last year, a tweet from a woman named Dorthy Holmes went viral that depicted the baby shower of her best friend, Chelsie Collins. “Nobody showed up to my best friends baby shower. Just my boyfriend and me :(” it read, accompanied by four photos of empty chairs and tables and the expectant mother looking despondent.
The tweet evoked enough sympathy to garner more than 16,000 retweets before it was deleted, but in that time span, Dorthy had published Chelsie’s Walmart gift registry and a link to her PayPal. According to reports at the time, more than 350 gifts were purchased for Collins, which is also around the time people started getting suspicious. One Twitter user claimed to have called the restaurant where the shower took place and said that all 12 guests had indeed showed up, leading to numerous accounts claiming the whole thing was a scam.
In an interview with Select All, however, Holmes and Collins said that even though more people did eventually arrive, at the time it was posted it was all true. Holmes said that she originally wrote it “to fuck with my online mutuals” and that Collins received less than $100 anyway.
Then there was the #PlaneBae saga from this past July, in which a woman used her riveting yet deeply intrusive viral thread about a couple who seemed to be flirting on a plane to ask for a film deal and a job at BuzzFeed. Though she eventually apologized, it was difficult not to see the situation as someone attempting to secure fame and money by invading the privacy of two unsuspecting strangers. The photos might not have been stolen from a cam girl or a YouTuber, but the couple never asked for their likenesses and activities to be dissected on the Today show.
Accounts can easily mimic the tone of viral tweets to sell you stuff
Though the perpetrators of #PlaneBae and the sad baby shower didn’t seem to engineer their virality in an effort to sell stuff, those who do can easily mimic the tone and voice of viral tweets in a way that makes their marketing seem more organic.
@HornyFacts, a handle with more than 4 million followers that tweets stereotypically relatable content about sex and relationships such as, “date idea: just come over and sleep, that’s it,” recently retweeted an account posing as NBC News that claimed a mysterious new drug would soon be available to try. (The account, which has since been suspended, seemed to exist solely to shill the same pill.)
A t-shirt sold by an affiliate of the popular meme account @hoegivesnofucks. @hoegivesnofucks/Instagram
The practice isn’t limited to Twitter, either. Popular meme Instagram accounts pretty uniformly make their sponsored ads look like any other meme on their page, for everything from their own merch to sketchy lash gel to dubious vaginal steaming products. So it’s no surprise that now, people selling weight-loss programs are taking the practice one step further by adopting the tone of elaborate viral threads.
All this goes to show that pretty much every time something gets even remotely popular on a social media network, scammers will find a way to make money off of it — without any concern for the identity and privacy of others.
