In a country where the pressures of staying slim and maintaining a perfect body combined with the growing number of Americans that are over weight and obese, it is no wonder why millions of American's use diet supplements every years. Consumers spend roughly $1 billion a year on weight loss products. These products have gained in popularity in recent years with roughly 60% of Americans being over weight and 30% obese.

Most weight loss products promise to help you loss weight with minimum effort and maximum results. The most common form of weight loss supplements includes pills, patches, and teas. However, consumer should be aware that none of these products are proven to work and almost all of them contain false claims, which manipulate and mislead consumers for the products own financial gain. Yet, consumers continue to buy them. Not only do these weight loss products not work, they also are harmful to your body and hazardous to your health.

Many people are unaware of the degree of harm these products have to their health because American's assume the FDA is regulating these products. In fact, two-thirds of Americans think that the government requires warning about potential side effects of these weight loss products. But that is not the case. With over 40,000 weight loss products in the market, and thousands of new products hitting the marketplace each year it is hard for the FDA, with a dwindling budge and only thirty or so employees, to keep track of every dietary supplement in the market. Moreover, the FDA has very little authority when it comes to regulating the dietary supplement industry. In 1994 Congress approved the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA) that allows any product of plant origin to be sold to the public as a dietary supplement with out approval from the FDA or other government agencies. The same act also eliminated the FDA's authority to prescreen weight loss products if they contain ingredients that existed and were approved before 1994 till they hit the market. Thus, the FDA only knows if there is a problem with the weigh loss product if people start getting sick. Furthermore, the act made it legal for the weight loss industry to promote false claims and false products.

While the FDA remains, the Federal Trade Commission is starting to crack down on some of these products, and even removed some from the market. The most recent of these products is Hydroxycut, one of the most popular weight loss brands in the market. The FDA has received 23 reports of significant adverse health effects in people who used Hydroxycut, including one people who needed a liver transplant and one possible death due to liver failure in connection with the supplement.

The recall of Hydroxycut is latests in a series of incidents that have found hazardous chemicals in weight loss products. In Feburary 2009, the FDA found the product StarCaps, a product that Kathie Lee Gifford enthusiastically talked about on the Today show, is hadzardous to your health and in violation of the law used a potent pharmaceutical drug called bumetanide which can have serious side effects. A few weeks earlier the FDA issued a list of 69 brands that contained hidden and potential hazardous drugs including an antiseizure medication, which the FDA calls illegal and unapproved drugs. A large percentage of these products either contain dangerous undeclared ingredients or they might be outright fraudulent on the ingredients and have no effect at all, said Michael Levy, the director of the F.D.A.'s division of New Drugs and Labeling Compliance. We don't think consumers should be using these products. This list of the products (which now includes 72 products) is:

2 Day Diet, 2 Day Diet Slim Advance, 2X Powerful Slimming, 3 Day Diet, 3 Days Fit, 3x Slimming Power, 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming, 7 Day Herbal Slim, 7 Days Diet, 7 Diet, 7 Diet Day/Night Formula, 8 Factor Diet, Eight Factor Diet, 21 Double Slim, 24 Hours Diet, 999 Fitness Essence, 999 Fitness Essence, BioEmagrecim, Body Creator, Body Shaping, Body Slimming, Cosmo Slim, Extrim Plus, Extrim Plus 24 Hour Reburn, Fasting Diet, Fatloss Slimming, GMP, Herbal Xenicol, Imelda Fat Reducer, Imelda Perfect Slim, JM Fat Reducer, Lida DaiDaihua, Meili, Meizitang, Miaozi MeiMaoQianZiJiaoNang, Miaozi Slim Capsules, Natural Model, Perfect Slim, Perfect Slim 5x, Perfect Slim Up, Phyto Shape, Powerful Slim, ProSlim Plus, Reduce Weight, Royal Slimming Formula, Sana Plus, Slim 3 in 1, Slim 3 in 1 Extra Slim Formula, Slim 3 in 1 Extra Slim Waist Formula, Slim 3 in 1 M18 Royal Diet, Slim 3 in 1 Slim Formula, Slim Burn, Slim Express 4 in 1, Slim Express 360, Slim Fast (not to be confused with the line of meal replacement and related products that are marketed as conventional foods), Slim Tech, Slim Up, Slim Waist Formula, Slim Waistline, Slimbionic, Sliminate, Slimming Formula, Somotrim, Starcaps, Super Fat Burner, Superslim, Super Slimming, Trim 2 Plus, Triple Slim, Venom Hyperdrive 3.0, Waist Strength Formula, Xsvelten, Zhen de Shou

These crack downs on weight loss products used of hazardous chemicals and false claims is not anything new. A few years ago the FTC took four companies to court for using false and misleading advertising to sell their weight loss products. The products include Xenadrine EFX, CortiSlim, One A Day Weight Smart, and Trimspa. Studies found no reliable or scientific evidence that these four products actually help people loose or control weight. The studies also found that in most cases, people appearing in ads for these products claiming the weight loss was solely due to the diet pill actually lost their weight from diet and exercise. It was the second time in a little under fifteen years that the FTC had taken the company One A Day Weight Smart to court for using false and misleading advertisement. Both times the matters were settled out of court and the product was not permitted to make further claims that did not match the science. This allowed the product to continue to be sold on store shelves. Additionally, the four products were only force to pay $25 million in total. When you take into consideration how much each of those four products make a year, that settlement is barely considered a slap on the wrist. If that products is going to sell its products using false claims, it is likely that they will continue to do it in the future until there is a court ruling on the matter or the product is taken off the shelves. Another product, CortiSlim's false claims went further than just weight loss, claiming they reduce the risk of Osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer disease, even cancer.

Some hazardous ingredients that consumers should absolutely avoid in weight loss products are ephedra (which is now off the market), bitter orange, guarana, and hoodia.