An Unsettling Trend...

I've been noticing an unsettling trend with the claims made by supplement retailers lately. Seems it's no longer enough to make one outrageous claim about your product -- i.e., "lose 20 lbs. in 10 days." Nope, now retailers are pushing the envelope even farther, some of them making two and even three ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims about their products. Check this out for instance...

Zalestrim (reviewed here) a product targeted at women and sold primarily on eBay, claims to be a potent fat burner, while at the same time boosting libido and increasing breast size.

Lipovox (reviewed here) another eBay-marketed product, claims to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles, eliminate acne, and cause significant weight loss.

Finally, Myoffeine (reviewed here), a male-targeted product, claims to make users "freaky lean with bulging muscles", not "skinny with flat muscles" (whatever that means).

Of course, none of the claims made by any of these products are validated with anything resembling real evidence. No natural product, for instance, has ever been shown to increase breast size, and the FTC has acted on several companies who marketed products which made similar claims. Bodybuilders know that gaining muscle while losing fat is almost impossible to do, which is why they employ "bulking" and "cutting" training cycles. And any product rich in antioxidants (like Lipovox) can make the claim that they are "anti-aging".

So what's going on here? Have consumers been so bombarded by the message that they "can lose 20lbs in 20 days" that it no longer makes any impact? Is it only by promising miracles that retailers can elicit a response from their audience? Or is it simply an underhanded tactic to obtain the upper hand on competitors?

Any way you want to slice it, it's an unsettling trend!