Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Why the Lack of Fascination with Kimkins?

The wheels of justice turn slowly. Fortunately for Heidi Diaz, the core demographic that she defrauded grew up watching Sesame Street and have a short attention span as a result.

That may be an exaggeration, but there certainly is less going on on the blogosphere. A result in the proceedings will probably get some people talking for awhile, maybe even the media. Personally, I think the media is done with this human drama.

WOEOTD: Raw Food Diet

I am going to start featuring a different Way of Eating every few days. I am not promoting or criticizing any of these. I am instead going to present them without much commentary beyond a basic description.

The first Way of Eating of the Day is Raw Food. This is kinda like the Bones and Raw Food (BARF) diet that was all the rage for dogs recently…except without the bones.

Fat Actress?

If you are sensitive to criticism, here is a dose of perspective for you. This video features Aishwarya Rai, who is considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in the World. She has recently been the subject of some very harsh criticism in the Indian media. This criticism is about her weight.

As an actress, she is asked to lose 10 or more pounds for movie roles on occasion. I think that is a reasonable request. Actors often take it upon themselves to gain or lose significant amounts of weight. I remember Tom Hanks looking lanky for Philadelphia and Castaway. Some actors and actresses gain weight on purpose for roles. George Clooney was supposedly thrown into a state of depression after he gained 30 pounds for a role.

Anyway, the Indian actress should not have to suffer the derision of the tabloids over a little bit of belly fat.

A Very Public Weight Loss Journey

I was checking out YouTube for anything related to Kimkins just now. There wasn’t anything new on that front. I noticed that the surveillance video of Heidi has surpassed 10,000 views without any fanfare.

A few diet vLoggers have started adding kimkins as a keyword to unrelated videos, which is fine. This is how I discovered YvesMetamorphosis. Her weight loss journey is not a remarkable success or failure. She is not selling anything. What makes her channel worth mentioning is just the fact that it is a very public accounting of her 10 week effort. I wish her well.

Which Presidential Hopeful is a Weight Loss Success Story?

In my mind, the act of taking control of your personal health and losing 100 pounds seems like a pretty good talking point for a political candidate. I am a bit out of the loop, but I am still surprised that I didn’t see this bit of trivia in the news coverage during all these months of campaigning. I would like all my regular commentators to let me know if they already knew. Also, if you don’t know, take a guess. I’ll give you one hint. It’s not Obama.

Success and Frustration

I came stumbled upon an interesting weight loss story today. First off, let me direct you to a page that converts ’stone’, a ridiculous and archaic measure of weight, into pounds, a somewhat less ridiculous and archaic measure of weight.

Stone to Pounds

That will help when you read the dramatic weight loss story. The sad part is that the man who lost so much weight cannot afford plastic surgery and he has an arguably debilitating amount of loose flapping skin. His mother sold her house to pay for his gastric bypass surgery. He would probably be dead now had he stayed at his astoundingly large size.

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.

Support For Those With Eating Disorders

A Kimkins staff member has stated on national television that they try to prevent people from developing eating disorders by providing support. Just prior to this statement she admits that the incidence of eating disorders in a group of people with food issues is inevitable.

I am curious about what happens when this support does not prevent an eating disorder. What happens when someone who is active on the forum makes statements that are clear indications that they have an eating disorder? What happens when someone on the Kimkins forum is vocally concerned that something is wrong with their personal way of eating?

I Missed It :(

This blogger has been AFK for some R&R, FYI. The lack of commentary of the story about Kimkins on Good Morning America was not intentional.

It goes without saying that everybody else is talking about it. I don’t know that much about the reach and popularity of this television show. I am not a morning person. Lets hope it will serve as a warning to some of those January dieters.

Another ABC News Infomercial

I am surprised at these items on network news that are basically infomercials. If I was a hard nosed reporter covering this, I think I would talk to someone about whether a blue laser reflectance value for our hand has any relationship at all to the levels of antioxidants in our blood. I am not a hard nosed reporter, but I can still do a quick search…

These people are good. The BioPhotonic Scanner technology is owned by a nutriceutical company and seems to have been the cornerstone for a turn of the century MLM scheme. I have no idea how they were able to get such favorable coverage on ABC news. Maybe they pay for it. Maybe the News teams are happy to be spoon fed a story by a self-interested source. They do fire off one or two quick sentences that let them off the hook in the event that it is out and out fraud.