You should always speak with your health care provider anytime you want to try a dietary supplement, regardless of its popularity. Anyone sensitive to caffeine should use caution when choosing a Plexus supplement, as many of them contain the stimulant. Also, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, those with bleeding disorders, anxiety, glaucoma, high blood pressure or irritable bowel syndrome should not consume green coffee, as it can worsen these conditions. Green coffee may also elevate homocysteine levels, which is associated with heart disease, so use caution if you have a heart condition.
Category: Weight Loss Products
Fake reviews are increasingly prevalent across many top retailer websites, according to a study from Fakespot, which analyzes online customer reviews for fake or unreliable reviews.
- 52 percent of reviews posted on Walmart.com are “inauthentic and unreliable,” Fakespot estimates
- 30 percent of Amazon reviews are fake or unreliable, the study found
- About a third of reviews on makeup retailer Sephora and video-game service Steam are also unreliable or fake, the analysis discovered
- “My advice is to be very skeptical” when reading online reviews, said Saoud Khalifah, CEO of Fakespot
The fake reviews threaten to undermine the credibility of retailers struggling with the influx, according to Fakespot, which uses algorithms to look for patterns of deception in reviews. Manufacturers are eager to earn 5-star reviews that can push their products to the top of a search result on Amazon, for instance, with some turning to trickery to make their products stand out.
“You need a lot of good positive reviews to convince people to check out their products,” said Khalifah, who wrote a software program to detect fake reviews after getting tricked himself by glowing reviews for a sleep supplement. After the supplement didn’t work, he realized many of those positive reviews were fake.
Khalifah said his research “tells me that 1 in 3 reviews on any of these platform is highly unreliable. They have been influenced by people at the company [making or marketing the product that’s sold on the website] or written by people hired by the company. There is a lot of bias in the reviews.”
For instance, companies will send postcards to people who recently purchased a product on Amazon, promising them a gift card to the site if they write a 5-star review that gets published. Other companies hire professional reviewers to post glowing reviews, while some use bots to post fake reviews en masse.
In the case of the postcards offering gift cards in exchange for top reviews, Fakespot’s Khalifah says the customer reviews are still problematic. In some cases, the offers are only valid if the review is posted within a few days of the purchase, but that may not give a consumer enough time to test the product and figure out of it performs as advertised.
“These influenced reviews are degrading the quality of your online shopping experience,” he says.
Legal action
In a statement sent to CBS MoneyWatch, Walmart said it recognizes that reviews are “an important part of the Walmart shopping experience.” It added that it moderates all reviews. “If we do not believe a review is from an actual customer, we immediately remove it from our site,” the company said.
Amazon said it invests “significant resources” in maintaining the quality of its reviews. “Even one inauthentic review is one too many,” the company said in a statement sent to CBS MoneyWatch.
It noted it has posted participation guidelines for reviewers and companies that sell on its site, and it added that it suspends, bans and takes legal action against those who violate its policies.
Amazon said it uses a combination of investigators and automation to root out inauthentic reviews. “We estimate more than 90 percent of inauthentic reviews are computer generated, and we use machine learning technology to analyze all incoming and existing reviews 24/7 and block or remove inauthentic reviews,” the company said.
Sephora and Steam’s parent company, Valve, didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
How to detect fake reviews
Fake reviews started proliferating several years ago, but show no sign of letting up, Khalifah says. While they may seem like a nuisance, they have the potential to mislead consumers about the quality of products. And consumers tend to rely on those reviews for purchasing advice, with about 84 percent of consumers saying they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, Fakespot said.
Consumers can plug in the URL of a product into Fakespot’s website, which grades the reviews from A to F and provides insights into whether a retailer has removed reviews, a sign that some of the reviews may have been fake or biased. One popular external battery on Amazon, for instance, earned a “D” rating from Fakespot, which determined that fewer than 44 percent of the reviews were reliable.
Consumers can also eyeball reviews on their own for signs of deception. Khalifah says red flags include:
- A one-day surge in five-star reviews
- Broken grammar
- Reviews from reviewers who post hundreds of reviews in one day
It’s not only that companies are faking glowing reviews, but companies are hiring people or using bots to also post fake “bad” reviews for competitors. A sudden rash of 1-star reviews for a product could be a sign of sabotage, for instance.
“We believe the review system is broken,” Khalifah said. “People still don’t realize how much the review system is gamed.”
The Federal Trade Commission is watching, too. On Tuesday it announced its first case against a marketer’s use of phony paid reviews on an independent retail website. Cure Encapsulations Inc. settled FTC allegations it made false and unsubstantiated claims for its garcinia cambogia weight-loss supplement through a third-party website the agency said was paid to write and post fake reviews on Amazon.com.
“When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules,” Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
WHEN you’re trying to lose weight, it can be tempting to seek out a quick fix.
But do they really exist?
There are lots of companies promising us pills and potions that help to speed up weight loss.
A US regulator recently fined an Amazon firm $12.8 million for fake reviews of a weight loss supplement, which claimed that it “literally blocked fat”.
But are all of these dieting products bogus or might there actually be some truth behind a few weight loss supplements?
“Supplements stating they can actively promote weight loss, without mentioning the need to address other factors, should probably be avoided,” nutritional therapist Ellie Isom from the Clinical Nutrition Team at BioCare, told Healthista.
Anything that promises to help you lose a ridiculous load of weight in a week is probably best avoiding.
But, she says, there are some natural ingredients that really can speed the process along.
1. Fat blockers – beware
The holy grail of weight loss supplements, fat blockers claim to stop the body from absorbing fat.
Sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want their fat to melt away – for their body to positively reject it?
Well, Ellie warns that they tend to have some pretty unpleasant side effects, including diarrhoea.
“Fat is important in our bodies, especially essential fats, such as omega-3 and omega-6,” she said.
“These fats are used within our body for so many processes including the production of hormones and anti-inflammatory molecules, moisturising our skin, and supporting our cardiovascular health, to name a few.
“Excluding fat altogether from your diet, or supplementing with fat blockers, can actually be detrimental to your overall health.”
2. Green tea extract – does work
Green tea is known to have tonnes of health benefits and weight loss is one of them.
It’s been proven to help support with fat loss, with research showing that it really can make a difference in overweight people.
A randomised double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial saw 50 overweight women randomly divided into two groups.
Group A received dietary supplements containing 125mg green tea and group B received placebos. These were taken twice with lunch and twice with dinner every day for eight weeks.
The study found that those taking green tea supplements for eight weeks had beneficial effects on weight loss and reducing their BMI.
Scientists from Anglia Ruskin Uni are currently looking into the beneficial effects of green tea.
3. Green coffee extract – might work
There’s some research suggesting that green coffee extract can help but most of it has been conducted on animals – not humans.
Until we see some concrete results in human subjects, it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that green coffee extract is an effective weight loss supplement or not.
4. Raspberry ketones – probably don’t work
You can find raspberry ketones everywhere, from Holland Barrett to MyProtein.
But Ellie says there is currently a serious lack of research on raspberry ketones and weight loss.
Raspberry ketones are claimed to cause the fat within cells to be broken down more effectively, helping your body burn fat faster.
They are also claimed to increase levels of adiponectin, a hormone that helps to regulate metabolism.
“The efficacy and reliability of raspberry ketones is questionable, and they are rarely recommended by registered nutritional therapists.”
5. Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) – might work
CLAs are the fatty acids found mainly in meat and dairy, and there is some evidence that they can support fat management.
In fact, one study has found that they can reduce fat mass in overweight people.
But we don’t really know how CLAs work yet, and they’ve been shown to increase inflammation in overweight people…which means that taking them could be dangerous.
Ellie said: “Although supplement with CLA could potentially support fat management, it should perhaps be used with caution”.
6. Garcinia cambogia – does work
This stuff is a fruit native to Indonesia and it often appears in weight loss supplements claiming to bust fat.
And there is actually a load of evidence to support that claim.
It contains hydroxycitric acid, which helps the body to process fat. It’s also been found to our satiety signals – meaning that we feel fuller for longer.
Obviously, supplements for weight loss really shouldn’t be your first – or only – port of call.
Healthy eating and exercise have to play the key roles in any weight loss journey, as well as making sure that you’re getting enough sleep.
If you’ve plateaued in your weight loss journey, then maybe trying a supplement can help but they won’t be a quick fix and they can’t be taken as substitutes for healthy living.
And they can’t get the route of the weight issue in the first place, so there’s no guarantee that the weight won’t pile back on.
You’re best off consulting your GP before taking supplements and chatting about what options there are open to you for potentially more sustainable, safer methods.
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