Food Scam
Thirty percent of adults over the age of 20 are obese (source: CDC). That our popular culture is body image obsessed doesn't need a reference. It's a nasty bit of irony that, between the "be thin be beautiful" messages, commercials relentlessly push some of the most unhealthy and calorie dense foods available. I don't watch much television, but I occasionally find myself humming the latest KFC jingle.

GMail has banners above their email space. Today I saw an add for a diet aid. I usually ignore all the adds, but this one caught my eye. It was about something that I really enjoy: tea. It was an add for something called Hu-Long tea. It promises to help shed pounds. After very little digging I found this link: The truth about wu long tea. It turns out that this "diet miracle" is nothing more than plain old oolong tea!

The big buzz about oolong (or it's re-marketed name "wu long") comes from a couple of research articles from groups in Japan. I read through one of the articles (see the link at the bottom of "The truth about oolong tea"). It's a nice article that uses indirect calorimetry to measure energy expenditure (EE). It also hypothesises about the potential agents that may be responsible for the significantly increased EE in oolong tea drinkers. Their concluding paragraph:
In conclusion, there were some limitations in the current study, but the results suggested that oolong tea increased EE and the factor was not only caffeine or EGCG but also some kinds of polymerized polyphenols.

The popular site for wu long tea is selling 60 tea bags for $37. That's on sale from $79.95. I just bought some organic oolong at the market, at crazy NYC prices: 20 bags for ~$3.75 without shipping and handling (though I had to walk a couple blocks carrying my groceries while trying to talk on the phone).

In an environment where obesity, a legitimate public health concern, is oddly contrasted by our culture's obsession with thinness, it's disgusting to see scammers trying to take advantage of often desperate people. The worst part is I've only picked a very, very mild example that happened to invade my email space. There are others. One resource for telling scam from plan is at the FTC.