from the Government’s “Find 30” campaign aimed at getting us moving again to our cultural obsession with beauty. It’s no surprise then that we spent an estimated $789 million on the weight loss industry in 2010, throwing money at weight loss supplements, meal replacement programs, dieticians, low calorie shakes and books. “Point me to your weight loss section,” asks a customer at a busy Perth pharmacy, the second such request in the hour I spent with pharmacy owner and pharmacist Rachel Morgan-Jones. In her mid-thirties, slim and with an easy smile, Ms Morgan-Jones is the picture of health as she stands in front of a formidable looking wall stocked from floor to ceiling with medications and eye-catching signs that cheerily declare “ask your doctor about me!” Selling health is her business. The customer, laden with shopping from the nearby supermarket begins to peruse the staggering array of supplements, bars, shakes and pills. A happy blonde leers down from a poster, holding a shake and looking at it with adoration, “you can look just like me” the poster suggests but does not say. Ms Morgan-Jones begins rattling off what sounds like a well-rehearsed script about high protein this and low carbohydrate that, retelling the success stories. The customer reaches for a bottle with “Metabolism Booster” boldly stamped across it, opting like so many for what they think to be the quick fix. The miracle weight loss pill.
In 2012 the Department of Health and Ageing released a series of guidelines for the health industry to help when dealing with the management of overweight or obese adult patients. It says an eating plan involving a reduced energy intake is more favourable than strict diet plans that eliminate total food groups, for maintaining and sustaining weight loss. They also supported and remarked on the effectiveness of meal plans or meal substitutions, saying, as well as weight loss, an improvement could also be seen in waist circumference, cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. No mention was made of diet pills, metabolism tablets or weight loss detoxes. Ms Morgan-Jones admits to the store selling a lot of these so-called “diet pills”, containing weird and wonderful, confusing and often unpronounceable ingredients, all packaged into a convenient twice a day tablet. “What people don’t realise is that most are just Vitamin C, guarana and fibre… throw in a little milk thistle and you can say it helps detox the liver,” she tells me in a soothing English accent. It is not hard to see how so many Australians fall for the diet pill
trap and why so many are bypassing the doctor’s surgery in favour of their local chemist or health food store. In Australia alone the market for weight loss programs and supplements has rocketed, though in many cases the cause of the weight gain is never completely dealt with. Many people turn to over the counter pills as a fix all solution to what is often a much deeper problem. Depression, medication, stress and even giving up cigarettes can cause weight gain and all require intervention and assessment from a health professional before undertaking any drastic weight loss programs. “Besides prescriptions and paracetamol our biggest seller is Slimmm,” Ms Morgan-Jones tells me. It proves just how prevalent the weight loss market has become, rivalling large pharmaceu-
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