An Addendum to Paul’s Metabosyn Review…

Posted By elissa on Jun 29, 2013 | 2 comments

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I haven’t kept up with the newest material on the main domain. But I had some extra time today, so I thought I’d take a look.

There’s some good stuff there (kudos to Paul and Sumi!).

I was especially amused by Paul’s Metabosyn review. The review itself wasn’t funny, but whenever I see the address, 3165 Millrock Dr. Ste 500, SLC Utah, my eyes start to spontaneously roll upwards. Afterwards, I just had to check out the sales site.

That was the amusing part, lol.

I can’t include a screenshot (not interested in a copyright spat), but you can look for yourself. As of this writing, the header features a pic of a young woman next to the product. She’s meant to be aspirational: she’s sporting a lean, bare midriff (what else?) beneath her dark blue sports bra, and has a sultry look on her face.

Below the header, there’s also a pic of a smiling doctor – you can tell by the stethoscope casually draped around the collar of his lab coat. Unlike a lot of stereotypical ad docs, he’s not a silver-haired, “Marcus Welby” type – rather, he’s a 30-something man with a frat-boy grin and a slight 5-o’clock shadow.

Thanks to the number of freebie fitness/diet e-books I’ve produced over the years, I know stock photos when I see ’em. There’s such a contrived “feel” to so many of them, which is why the more ridiculous examples are targeted for mockery (see, for example, “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” and “Women Struggling to Drink Water“).

Since many “budget” royalty-free archives carry the same pics, I took a quick tour of my favorite, iStockphoto.com. It took me less than 10 minutes to find both the woman (“Fit woman with serious facial expression“) and the “doctor” (“Happy Male Doctor Isolated on White Background“).

Obviously, I don’t have a problem with the use of stock photos in general. But the way I see it, a retailer that promises “No Hype, No Fake Promises…” adjacent to pictures of a (strongly implied) fake product user and a fake doctor has some issues with credibility, right off the bat.

It’s just another reason why I distrust supps available only through “one-off” product sales sites like this one. The model’s “hot” alright, but it’s unlikely that Metabosyn had anything to do with it. And while there may be a doc or two out there who’d recommend OTC weight loss supps to their patients, the medical profession generally frowns on them. A pic of a smiling, confident “doctor” implies medical approval and certainty where none actually exists.

As the saying goes, “caveat emptor.”