The "consumer activist"
of Natural Cures, Kevin Trudeau, may be going to prison for saying weight loss
is easy.
According to his email sent to subscribers of his website, authorities are
after his head for his weight loss book that says weight loss is easy and that
he needs financial support for his defense. November 4 this year will be his
trial.
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| Kevin Trudeau, Journalist? |
Trudeau has lined up a series of fund-raising activities that includes
seminars, a private dinner, one-hour personal coaching, and energy-work
sessions with payment ranging from $500 to $25,000 in an effort to pool
resources for the KT Legal Defense as shown in the email. The announcement says
the seminar and dinner respectively may take place tentatively on October 20
and October 21, this year, but both are subject to change or cancellation.
Trudeau wrote Natural Cures
"They" Don’t want You to Know About, published by Alliance
Publishing Group, Inc in 2004. Already his flap cover carries accusations
posed into questions: " Did you know that the medical profession, in
partnership with the chemical industry, has a huge interest in keeping you sick
rather than healing you? Do you realize that the Federal Government is doing
everything in its power - and some things well beyond its stated power - to
keep all of this a secret?" These accusations remain thematic throughout
the 273 pages book.
In 2006, emboldened by his first book, published by the same company Trudeau
wrote a thicker book of 358 pages, More
Natural "Cures" Revealed. This time the flap cover announces that
the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has censored his first book.
"That book still saved lives," he wrote.
In the second book, More Natural Cures Revealed, Trudeau claimed for the first
time that he had been a "secret covert operative for almost 20 years"
which is why from personal experience, " Kevin knows how big business and
government try to debunk individuals who promote products that could hurt the
profits of the giant multi- national corporations."
What about the weight loss issue that the email claimed may send Kevin Trudeau
to jail? The first book, Natural Cures, carries a Chapter 8, titled, How to
Lose Weight Effortlessly and Keep it Off Forever. In 10 pages, Trudeau suggested
30 ways like drinking a glass of water upon rising in the morning, eating a big
breakfast, drinking distilled water each day, walking for at least one hour a
day, not eating after six p.m.;
- Doing a Candida cleanse, a colon cleanse; eating organic grapefruits all day,
taking no aspartame or any artificial sweeteners, shunning away from monosodium
glutamate (MSG), taking digestive enzymes, taking no diet sodas or diet
food;
- Not eating in fast food or chain restaurants, taking no high fructose corn
syrup, white sugar or white flour.
The other half of Trudeau's recommendations include eating organic apples all
day, eating only organic poultry and fish, limiting dairy products, doing a
liver cleanse, eating a huge salad at lunch and dinner, doing rebounds, adding
hot peppers to meals, using organic apple cider vinegar;
- Breathing enough, wearing magnetic finger rings, getting colonics in 15 days,
adding muscle, fasting, cheating whenever you want; and reducing or eliminating
the uncontrollable urge to eat when not hungry.
The second book contains Chapter 9 titled, Weight Loss Secrets, and is only 7
pages long. He recommended eating organic beef, lamb, and chicken. Of fish,
wild salmon, sardines, tuna. Of fruits, organic grapefruit, apples, pears, strawberries,
blueberries, plume, peaches, apricots.
Then he said, Stay away from bananas, they have a tendency to make you gain
weight. He then gave his common breakfast: scrambled eggs, smoked salmon
or lamb chop, or sardines, or a small steak.
In two fat paragraphs, Trudeau wrote about Organic, Unrefined Virgin Coconut
Oil. "All you do is take one tablespoon in the morning and one tablespoon
in the late afternoon." He followed it up with assurance. “If you do this
every day for 30 days, here is what you could find. High blood pressure
can be a thing of the past. Circulation problems vanish. Mood swings, gone.
Depression, lifted. Constipation, cured. Arthritis pain, reduced or eliminated.
Cancer, in remission. Cholesterol normalized. Acid reflux and heartburn, diminished
and gone forever."
"Oh, and here is a major side effect: If you are overweight, you will
probably lose ten pounds!" Describing organic, unrefined virgin
coconut oil as having a "dramatic, positive effect on the body for its
overwhelming health- giving properties," he said his pants were falling
off after three days of taking this oil.
Other things Trudeau recommended in passing were digestive enzymes, salsa, raw
organic apple cider vinegar, Yerba Mata tea.
Kevin Trudeau
claimed he is "just a journalist" doing some reporting. From the
books he wrote, is Trudeau a journalist, considered a journalist? By being
such, he is covered by some rights protection as in freedom to expose
information for the protection of the public. But in being journalist, there
are expectations in as simple as awareness of audience needs.
What he had written, Trudeau said, are only medical opinions because
"there are no medical facts" (Natural Cures, p. 8).
What reporting Trudeau actually did is about the musical chairs made by FTC
honchos in order to prove tie-ups between them and Big Pharma and point to
himself as victim. But his title is about Natural Cures although he prints
cures with quotation marks. Naturally, he is bound to, as a
"journalist," back up his cures with enough information, and
information that is tightly bound to research. Due to the nature of the subject
matter, Trudeau can safely be concluded as doing a tourist approach to it while
making money on the side. Throughout his books, he would write, "Go to my
site at naturalcures.com.
I can't tell you everything here." But when you go there, you cannot read
everything. You got to pay.
The danger in Kevin Trudeau's work is not in exposing fraud or whatever he
thinks is fraud for the benefit of the public. It is the practice of something
that requires many years of study against his cavalier confidence of an
absolute truth. And writing his prescriptions or recommendations as cures or
"cures," the way he does it does not help his audience in the long
run. To him, it is like there are no limitations, no scope, no exemptions, no
buts, and no ifs in his sweeping prescriptions and his promises of cure
sounding like absolutes with no single research to boot.
Did he have the needs of his audience in mind? His Chapter 1 of his very first
book talks about himself. "I Could Have Been Dead" is the title.
Beginning with himself, true to its colors the whole book shows him running to
his audience for protection now and then because authorities are after him.
His chapter on "How to Never Get Sick Again" is fairly advice but is
mixed with funny prescriptions and proscriptions like, Don't read the
Newspaper, Don't Watch the News. "My personal studies show that a person's
pH can go from a healthy alkaline state, to the cancer-prone acidic taste just
after 30 minutes of watching news broadcast,” Trudeau wrote.
The probable tie- up of the FTC and Big Pharma is not new revelation. As early
as half-a-century ago, that had been feeder for the minds of readers. At the
very least, Trudeau's task could have been substantially backing up his
reporting (Read: Prescriptions) with facts. Then and there, he could have a
world of journalists behind him.
The Virgin Coconut Oil that he named in his second book for weight loss for
example, merely had him saying his pants were falling off after three days of
taking the oil once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. Why? How?
What is in this oil that made it so? Did he look into what research is saying
about this commodity?
Others are better
at mentioning the medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) in VCO that explains why although it
is saturated oil, it has certain overwhelming properties. Trudeau should have
done research because a reader could mistake his cure as endless prescription.
As oil is oil and has no fiber, what can happen to the body then?
From 2006 onwards,
could Kevin Trudeau have written a whole book on weight loss? From his usual way
of touch-and -go writing, Trudeau could not have pinned down the subject more
than his perfunctory ways of writing prescriptions or recommendations. But suddenly
and suddenly, not even a year after his second book, he wrote, The
Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About by the same publishing house in early 2007. He had stumbled on something – a giant leap from his
prescriptions of virgin coconut oil and salsa and apple cider vinegar and Yerba
Mata Tea.
Now, it is having to do with direct interventions with the body,
particularly the hypothalamus. Now, it is use of herbal supplements and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) injections that
the FTC claims are fraudulent measures. Wikipedia writes “The controversial book
describes a plan to change activity in the hypothalamus gland, linked to the pituitary gland, with the intention to control hunger and
regulation of fat cells, by using herbal supplements and repeated use of the hCG hormone.”
Where
did Trudeau learn all of this in such a short span of time and write a book
that made millions for himself?
Tradeau’s
weight loss procedure is being compared to a 1950’s diet plan of British endocrinologist,
Dr. A.T.W. Simeons according
book reviews. If Dr. Simeons Diet has been highly criticized as dangerous to
health, more so Kevin Trudeau’s weight loss cure – he who has no medical
background.
From the time involved
alone, with less than a year jump from one perspective on weight loss to
another, one can see Kevin Trudeau is not personally into this thing even as a
researcher. What is surer is that he is involved because of the money side of
it – but never with some social responsibility to his audience needs. He is not
a journalist and cannot claim protection as such.
To begin with, is Kevin Trudeau a legitimate consumer activist? The more books he writes, the more truth he reveals about himself. He, himself answers the question and points to our own foolishness for believing in his scams.
