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Hello, my name is Carolyn Dean, drcarolyndean.com. I'm a medical doctor and a naturopathic doctor
and I live in beautiful Maui. I've finished my 22nd health book, I have a free newsletter
and I also have an online wellness program that you can join. And today in this series
I'll be talking about dieting. The acai diet, well it's not actually a diet--it's
more like a diet scam. The acai is a- it's like a monster blueberry. It's a very large
fruit, grows in Central and South America and it has a lot of antioxidants--so it has
a lot of good properties. And what happened--I think it was around 2008--Dr. Oz and Oprah
talked about the acai berry on their television show, and the people who had been selling
acai supplements and acai drinks, they suddenly took the opportunity to use the celebrity
"endorsors" for the product. And it became such a huge scam--uh, people went to websites
and saw Dr. Oz's picture, Oprah's picture, and they decided 'well if Oprah says it's
good it must be good'. So a lot of people bought into the supplements--I don't even
know if there was a diet involved, but, um, the websites would say "This will promote
weight loss".
So what happened eventually is Dr. Oz and Oprah sued about forty different acai companies.
And I think the Federal Trade Commission got involved just this year, trying to stop websites
who kept, um, promoting through what looked like news sources--people who were discovering
the acai diet and having all kinds of remarkable results. So it's a huge scam and it's unfortunate
that, um, they'll take a fruit or a berry or some aspect of a healthy diet and they'll
concentrate it, put it in a supplement, put it in a drink and then tell you that it's
a miracle cure.
For some people it worked, for a lot of people it didn't. And for people who went to websites
where they'd get your credit card, and give you a free sample for the postage, found out
that they'd bought into a system where every month they were charged, you know, up to a
hundred, hundred-and-fifty dollars for their acai product.
So stay away from acai--in supplement and drink form. But, um, you can try to get the
berry in forms that you know are safe and organic, perhaps, and aren't involved with
the scam aspect.