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PIZZA OIL?!?!
Jul. 24th, 2009 08:36 amI'm used to seeing slimming aids of various horrifying varieties advertised in spam emails and the sidebar on facebook (home lipo anyone??), but it always surprises me when they appear on glossy billboards or in women's magazines. So it was good to see this month's Scarlet (don't laugh, I feel dirtier about having bought it in ASDA than about reading it!!) investigating the new product sold as ALLI. Now this product is being pushed quite heavily - I can testify to billboards all over my city, plus an advert in the very store where I bought the magazine.
Now, what ALLI apparently does is bind to the fat enzymes in the food you eat, stopping a proportion of the fat from getting digested or stored in your body. This also includes the healthy fats, my example would be the packet of nuts I chomp my way through each day in the hope of keeping my brain working and my skin nice. I'll let the Scarlet journalist describe the next bit since, amazingly, she has managed the yuk factor better than me: 'The excess fat comes out in poo as an oily orange discharge, described by Alli as looking like the oil on pizza topping.' Furthermore, you get discharge: to the extent that new users are warned to 'wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes to work'. I guess the orange leaky poo factor is a bit of a slimming aid too, in terms of putting people off their food! (And as my friend JE pointed out, you also burn off calories running to the bog. Nice.)
You'd think orange shit would be enough of a problem, but it isn't the only one. This stuff is only safe for adults with a BMI of 28 or over (ie into the overweight category). Now, in a shop it is possible to weigh and measure a customer and ask for proof of age. Pharmacies tend to have scales and won't sell certain things to kids anyway. But to be honest I'm not even convinced that the pharmacy kiosk in a supermarket is set up for this. And as for the internet - sorry, I'll believe when I see it that an underage anorexic won't get the chance to use this stuff to finish the job.
It would be bad enough if Alli was just another random substance pushed in a facebook sidebar along with 'shocking new weightloss tea' and 'the pink patch' (that will apparently get me hot girls - these ads have no more respect for monogamy than for body image). But this stuff is being marketed everywhere!
Sadly, I think the orange poo will main be the deciding factor in putting off some of the target audience...
Now, what ALLI apparently does is bind to the fat enzymes in the food you eat, stopping a proportion of the fat from getting digested or stored in your body. This also includes the healthy fats, my example would be the packet of nuts I chomp my way through each day in the hope of keeping my brain working and my skin nice. I'll let the Scarlet journalist describe the next bit since, amazingly, she has managed the yuk factor better than me: 'The excess fat comes out in poo as an oily orange discharge, described by Alli as looking like the oil on pizza topping.' Furthermore, you get discharge: to the extent that new users are warned to 'wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes to work'. I guess the orange leaky poo factor is a bit of a slimming aid too, in terms of putting people off their food! (And as my friend JE pointed out, you also burn off calories running to the bog. Nice.)
You'd think orange shit would be enough of a problem, but it isn't the only one. This stuff is only safe for adults with a BMI of 28 or over (ie into the overweight category). Now, in a shop it is possible to weigh and measure a customer and ask for proof of age. Pharmacies tend to have scales and won't sell certain things to kids anyway. But to be honest I'm not even convinced that the pharmacy kiosk in a supermarket is set up for this. And as for the internet - sorry, I'll believe when I see it that an underage anorexic won't get the chance to use this stuff to finish the job.
It would be bad enough if Alli was just another random substance pushed in a facebook sidebar along with 'shocking new weightloss tea' and 'the pink patch' (that will apparently get me hot girls - these ads have no more respect for monogamy than for body image). But this stuff is being marketed everywhere!
Sadly, I think the orange poo will main be the deciding factor in putting off some of the target audience...
