Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Heidi is Blogging up a Storm

The Blogspot blog authored by ‘Kimmer’ is probably the most active and relevant ‘affiliate’ blog left. There is a lot of well constructed new content there. I am not being sarcastic, I really think it is a well designed and well written blog. There is even a comment or two on the blog. They are both from people who mysteriously address their comment to somebody other than Kimmer, as if they mistakenly think it was posted by someone else. Both commentators also created a Blogger account near the time that they made their comment on Heidi’s Blog. Not surprisingly, they are both very positive comments.

There is no way know if Heidi wrote the comments herself, but it seems plausible.

Kimkins Exposure

The tangled web that is the Kimkins Controversy was given the cookie-cutter treatment of television journalism a few days ago. It is great that countless people who may have never heard of Kimkins got the basic messages that it is a fraud and that it is not a well researched and safe way of eating.

Actually, I am curious as to how many people would have seen this item on Good Morning America. I was surprised to learn that the TV show is aired in Europe, the Middle East, the Philippines and Australia. The show spent a lot of years as the #1 morning show in America. In November 2006, GMA averaged 5.1 million viewers. It has been a close second to The Today Show for many years.

So it’s quite likely that millions of people saw this news item. The only website that was mentioned and shown on television was Heidi’s site. It may be a bit early to look for the effect of the television exposure on her traffic, but so far it seems to have been minimal.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Exposed

If you discovered the Kimkins controversy recently and you are trying desperately to get your head around the whole thing, Kimkins Exposed should be one of your first stops. One of the most interesting twists in the Kimkins fraud was Heidi’s use of photographs from Russian Bride sites for her success story recreations. The author of Kimkins Exposed has a good compilation of the Russian Brides that have been discovered by many weary eyes.

This particular blog hasn’t been updated since last October. The point of many of the anti-kimkins blogs was to create engaging content that would stay on the front page of search queries for Kimkins. The author accomplished that mission. The nuts and bolts of information gathering related to Kimkins has taken place to a large extent on forums. The author of Kimkins Exposed is legendary in the realm of low carb forums.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Borat???

Where do I start with this blog review? I recently saw some hand wringing with regard to the offbeat humor that is the spawn of the Kimkins fraud. This blog is the penultimate example of this humor, if only for the reason that I have a new spell check and I wanted to see if I could spell penultimate right the first time. Unlike the real Borat, I don’t think this blogger ever fessed up to their true identity. It could be an open secret, I am way out of the loop on a lot of things.

This blog is ridiculous enough to be forgiven. The blogger also has good timing in that they quit when the joke had run its course.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: About About.com

About.com is not a blog. Its content is written by over 600 people who are called guides. They are considered experts on a particular topic and they are compensated by About.com, which is owned by the New York Times. The coverage of Kimkins is informative and well written. As an added bonus, the staff at Kimkins responded to the initial article claiming that it was biased and misinformed. What they got for their effort was a closer look. Anybody who has looked closely at Kimkins is going to be more critical, not less critical. Low Carb Diet Guide Laura Dolson included the rebuttal from Kimkins with her update and made further additions as people such as Christin left Kimkins. Christin was in charge of PR when the About.com coverage began

What Can be Learned from the Kimkins Controversy?

How do you react when your children express curiosity in the interests and stories that you are pursuing online? There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the Kimkins saga. Educators talk about ‘teachable moments’ and there have probably been a quite few of them in households where the exposure of the Kimkins fraud was being followed or carried out.

There’s a valuable lesson in business ethics. There’s a valuable lesson or two about human health. I think there are even lessons to be learned about collaboration and communication. If you have teens looking over your shoulder occasionally, it may dawn on them that adults are just as prone to ‘teh drama’ as they are.

A Change on This Site

I just removed a page from this site. I had been published a long time ago and it had links to several people who had been blogging while on the Kimkins diet. Most of those blogs are now either gone or inactive. I have saved those links in an unpublished page just in case anyone was using that page as a resource. It would appear that most people who are actively warning others against Kimkins are concentrating on new dieters at the moment.

Will Kimkins Endure?

I really do expect Kimkins.com to go away at some point, but I am not certain that it will. I know enough about the internet to know that the site metrics have a value in and of themselves. The lifetime subscription business model could come to an end and the site could remain in some form to generate advertising revenue.

Even though some advice that was dispensed by Kimkins.com runs counter to current medical standards for a safe and healthy diet, low carb eating is still a popular and viable option. I think one advantage that Heidi has is her keen understanding of her core demographic. It is actually almost scary how well she can speak to the conventions and insecurities of middle class house wives. Maybe she should become a political strategist. She would have to have a minder of some sort to look after the loose ends

The Libertarian Diet

I don’t have a new diet to promote. I just thought I would ramble on for a few sentences about the fact that adults can generally eat whatever they darn well want to, up to a point. Anorexics and others who suffer mental disorders related to eating may be hospitalized and force fed if they can be determined to be a danger to themselves. I guess the specific point that I want to make is that people have every right to follow the way of eating espoused by Kimkins.

Government agencies have guidelines with regard to what is considered a healthy diet for humans. The medical community has established minimum recommendations for caloric intake and other factors. Here is something that some readers may find entertaining…

The Magic Chicken Disappears

There is a GoDaddy Oops page where the Magic Chicken Diet is supposed to be. I do not know what this means. It could be a coincidence that the low carb community that was so critical and vocal about the Kimkins fraud took notice of this site right before it disappeared. It could be that the webmaster read the constructive criticism over at Slamboards and the site is down while they make positive changes. Going with a standard PayPal checkout would inspire more consumer confidence and give some measure of consumer protection. It could also be that the site owner was simply hoping for a low profile, short term money grab and that they are disappearing now that they are being criticized. If this is the case, it is one way in which they are NOT AT ALL like Kimkins.