Persuasive Essay On Hydroxycut

There are many dieting pill advertisements in the media today. When watching television or reading women’s magazines, odds are there is at least one advertisement of a weight loss and fat burning supplement. This is due to the fact that many women and men are trying to lose weight, but many people do not know that dieting pills have flawed claims and in some cases can be very harmful to the person taking the pill because they contain high risk chemicals in order for the pill to be a supplement.
One of the many dieting pills that act as a supplement is known as Hydroxycut. This dieting pill often includes photo shopped before and after pictures of women in tight dresses or bathing suits claiming they lost lots of weight, with the help of Hydroxycut. This ad also claims it is America’s number one selling weight loss supplement. The ad says it has clinically proven ingredients that aide people in losing up to
4.5 times the weight than diet and exercise alone. This pill also claims that it boosts metabolism, increases energy and initiates strength thermogenesis, but contains many flaws in the research.
There are many flaws in the research presented in the Hydroxycut ad. The first major flaw is the statement that Hydroxycut is not FDA approved. By stating that this pill is not FDA approved, the pill poses a threat to consumers. The FDA has branded this pill as unsafe to consumers. Since the pill is not FDA approved, there is not a way for the supplement to be “clinically proven”. Although it claims that it is clinically proven it does not refer to which clinic and if that clinic is dependable and reputable.
Another flaw in the advertisement is there were only two studies shown. There should be more replications of the study. Sal Marnello states, “If you look at the details – nothing more than a one-paragraph summary of the results of two different studies – you’ll see that a total of only 90 moderately obese subjects were studied. This is an insufficient sample size to reach any kind of valid conclusion.” The subjects also only ingested the key ingredient in the supplement. This is also a flaw because the study does not show what happens when a person takes the supplement. It shows what happens when taking the key ingredient only.
There are some ways Hydroxycut can improve their research claims.
The first way Hydroxycut could improve their claim is by showing more research on the supplement. The only research presented on Hydroxycut were two bar graphs and a very brief summary of what happened in the study. Another way the dieting pill could improve their claim, is to replicate the study multiple times. This would help support the main conclusion that the dieting pills do aide in losing weight and would provide support because they could rule out any outside variables that may have skewed the results. Another way would be to properly summarize the data that was collected in the study. The last way to make a better research claim would be to have the subjects actually ingest the supplement instead of just one key ingredient.
Hydroxycut is an ad that represents trickery and tries to get people to buy their product. This ad presents many flaws in research. Due to the trickery and pseudoscience this product has been recalled and sued many times because of the misleading and false
information.