Regulations of Miracle Diets

While on my quest to find why the does Federal trade commission not monitor the warning labels and advertising of these miracle diets, I was amazed to discover that the Federal Trade Commission has sued some of these companies for misleading advertising on more than one occasion.   I found it amazing that while the Federal Trade Commission does regulate and charge companies, as well name individuals endorsing the products in the law suits they are just too busy to actively pursue or stay on top of this billion dollar a year industry.  The cases that I looked at on the Federal trade commission website are not recent they date to 1997 to 2004 and  the amounts these billion dollar industries are being sued for or required to pay out is minimal 2, 3, 4 million dollars, compared to the billions of dollars in profit these companies are raking in.  According to an electronic news and information service editorial the Star Tribune, we (being those who use these products) are the test dummies since the FDA must first prove a product is harmful before they take action so with every purchase or pill ingested that furthers their “research”.   There is an obvious need for tighter advertising and sales regulation; however one must wonder why the FDA and the FTC is not tighter on these regulations.  Is it because they generate such massive amounts of revenue into the economy?  As the editorial brought to light, “congress has a lot on its plate right now: the recession, swine flu, health care reform”.  I am lead to believe that while we are in a recession why would the government intervene too strongly against these money makers?  The FTC has put out a system of 7 warning signs for such diets.   It seems that the FDA is depending too heavily on the FTC to regulate the labels, which have loose guidelines at best.

Why, why, why are we as consumers standing for such loose regulation of these products?