THE WIZARDS BEHIND THE CURTAIN of Weight Watchers and JENNY CRAIG

THE WIZARD BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Michelle Edmonds, M.A., M.Ed.

I’ve spent a lot of years studying what works and what doesn’t in the field of “weight loss” and women’s health, and I’ve discovered there are a few things that the big weight loss giants out there wouldn’t want you to know!

Here are 3 Weight Loss Industry Secrets that Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers Don’t Want You To Know:

1. A Smaller Body is Not Necessarily a Healthy Body

The idea of losing weight in and of itself has no bearing on the health or wellness of the individual as an idea on its own. When having a smaller body is the goal of a the program, then women see nothing wrong with sitting around the table sipping diet soda by the dump truck load while talking about their weight loss goals.

Low-calorie brownies, no-fat cheesecake and low-carb frozen lasagna offer a chemical cocktail of processed, genetically modified, hydrogenated, mechanically separated byproducts of something that once upon a time might have been considered “food”. Now it is merely the profitable packaged commodity of a multinational food corporation.

This isn’t a model for sustainable health. It’s a model for a sustainable business. What Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers don’t want you to know is that you can be skinny and sick!  SOUND BITE: This is a nutritional problem

2. It’s Not About Quantity. It’s About Quality.

All this talk of portion control is really a distraction to avoid the bigger, more important issue: QUALITY CONTROL!

Wheat, meat, dairy products and foods containing a lot of salt, fat and refined sugar are highly addictive foods.  The more salt, fat and sugar are injected in your meal, the more of it you’ll eat.

Food companies know this and count on it to help boost their sales. Most of the foods recommended by Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers are really nothing more than low-nutrient flavour bombs that make you fat, sick, and suck your energy while keeping you hooked into an addictive relationship with your food.

How many servings of slightly steamed broccoli can one girl eat? What about fresh Macintosh apples?

If your plate is filled with fresh fruit and vegetables, the chance that you overeat is virtually impossible (UNLESS those fruits and vegetables happen to be drenched in fat, sugar and salty toppings).

Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig will never tell you to just dose up on (quality protein and  vegetables), because they can’t patent and package the point system for serving those items. If you want to get back in control of your relationship with your food, QUALITY, not QUANTITY, is the first and most important area to address.

3. Jenny Craig is a Giant Chocolate Bar!


Weight Watchers is a Bottle of Ketchup!

When you sign your name on the dotted line and join the “I want to have a small body” society, you may not be aware of who you’re really dealing with. Your friendly weight loss consultant may look nice and have a sweet voice, but she may really be a giant chocolate bar or a big ol’ bottle of ketchup!

Recently I got curious and decided to dig a bit deeper and find out just who runs these conventional mega weight loss corporations:

Who’s the wizard behind the big green curtain turning the dials and firing off the smoke machine in the name of “Jenny Craig” and “Weight Watchers”?

What do they stand for?

What were their original intentions when they built these businesses?

What’s the story?

Though there is a real Jenny Craig whose living room was the starting point for it all,  on June 19, 2006 Jenny Craig sold the whole shebang to Nestlé for a whopping $600 million dollars. Is it a coincidence that there has been a media blitz on the health benefits of chocolate?

H. J. Heinz Corporation (yes, the ketchup company) owned Weight Watchers from 1978 until 1999 when they sold it for $734 million .  To this day,  H. J. Heinz continues to produce packaged foods bearing the Weight Watchers brand (and with point values clearly identified). Weight Watchers was acquired in a leveraged buyout in 1999 by Artal Luxembourg and went public in 2001. Artal continues to own over 50% of the shares of Weight Watchers as of 2010.

Thank you Terra your original  post. 

By: Michelle Edmonds, M.A., M.Ed. Sr, Nutritionist, #SerenityWeightLossandDetoxificationprogram

Read more at:   #eLATIONmagazine-Health/Wellness