Initial Loss Weighs on Weight Loss Companies

Small Texas company sees FTC pressure from big drug companies

Several companies that manufacture and market "weight management" products have lost their first battle -- to keep the FTC from going to court against them.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit in Florida federal court against companies based in Texas and Florida, in connection with what the FTC calls false advertising for a product sold on TV infomercials.

The Texas company, based in the Houston suburb of Conroe, is Madiera Management, which manufactures products under names like Fight the Fat, Mini Max, Slim Down Solution and Ever Slim.

But a spokesman for Madiera calls the lawsuit "politically motivated, considering that the Conroe company doesn't advertise the product -- it simply wholesales it to a marketing company.

The advertising on cable TV networks such as Bravo and the Comedy Central is handled by a Florida company, Slim Down Solutions, which makes the infomercials.

The ads claim the product contains D-Glucosamine, which will absorb up to 20 grams of dietary fat, and therefore should cause weight loss.

The FTC says D-Glucosamine won't cause weight loss, and claims that it will are false; the agency says the marketer of Madiera's product, called Slim Down Solution, is making such false claims.

(D-Glucosamine is molecularly similar to the Glucosamine that's sold over the counter as an aid to easing arthritis pain.) 

Madiera, however, says it has never claimed to make a weight loss product. It's what a spokesman calls a weight "management" product; that, taken with meals, will bind with fat in food and block absorption of fat in that meal, which is of course not the same as weight loss.

The Conroe company sticks by that claim, citing hundreds of scientific studies over decades that confirm it, according to a spokesman.

And Madiera says it intends to fight again against the FTC -- this time in federal court -- because the lawsuit is motivated by government pressure from big pharmaceutical companies, which want to see D-Glucosamine products and their manufacturers eliminated because drug companies have their own fat-blocking products ready to go to market soon.

The FTC lawsuit against the companies has not yet been set for trial.

-- MIke Shiloh