Internet celebrity weight-loss food exploded. E-commerce is still selling suspicious products.


   Expert: Buying illegally added medicines for weight loss poses great health risks

  A few days ago, Pudong police successfully detected a case of producing and selling weight-loss foods with prohibited ingredients (sibutramine), and this incident also triggered public concerns about the safety of weight-loss foods.

A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily found that some weight-loss foods with "unclear ingredients" even without the name of the product are still being sold on e-commerce platforms.

The popular science people said that if you want to lose weight by taking medicine, it is “unreliable”, and you should pay attention to your lifestyle.

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  The criminal detention incident led to the addition of prohibited ingredients to diet foods

  According to the official Weibo of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau's "Police-Citizen Express" news, on March 11, 2021, Pudong police successfully detected a case of producing and selling weight-loss foods with prohibited ingredients (sibutramine) and arrested the 26-year-old production staff. The woman Zeng Moumou, the 26-year-old woman Zhou Moumou, the 30-year-old woman Guo Moumou and other 32 suspects have all been criminally detained by the police.

At present, the case is under further investigation.

  In fact, before that, on March 17, CCTV exposed two weight-loss products for Internet celebrities.

  The cause of the incident was on the Xianyu APP. A store recommended a weight loss product called "Noka" and claimed that he was also using it without side effects.

However, the consumer Ms. Liu said that she bought more than two thousand yuan of "Noka" weight loss products and took them according to the instructions of the merchant. Although she did lose weight within a few days after eating, she experienced nausea and insomnia. And so on, and the net celebrity weight-loss product "Strong Gold" has also been reported by consumers to have similar problems.

  The test results show that "Noka" contains 31185.8 mg of sibutramine per kilogram, and the content of sibutramine in "strong gold" is as high as 17.8%.

  CCTV's exposure is not an isolated case.

Searching for "sibutramine" on the Internet frequently reveals information on the investigation and handling of diet foods containing this substance by law enforcement agencies.

In a typical case jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the General Administration of Market Supervision, and the State Food and Drug Administration not long ago, it was disclosed that Han XX and Hong XX mixed sibutramine, which is prohibited by the state, into weight-loss coffee and sold them on a large scale online. The sales amount reached more than 8 million yuan.

From 2018 to the incident, the group has sold more than one million weight loss coffees containing sibutramine.

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  E-commerce platforms and wechat companies cannot search for exposed products

  A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily searched for keywords such as "Noka" and "Qiangjin" on the e-commerce platform, but found no relevant products.

Among them, the Xianyu platform mentioned in the CCTV exposure, searched for keywords such as "weight loss" and "weight loss food", and the results were all kinds of sports equipment.

  In some stores that sell weight-loss foods in Moments, these two products have also become taboo words, and the related products are no longer visible in Moments.

In the reporter's unannounced visits, some micro-businesses selling diet foods frequently cut off with sibutramine.

"Do you want to have the kind of ingredient of sibutramine? We don't have it." When a micro-business that sells weight-loss foods purchased overseas, when faced with a reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily questioning all of its product materials, the other party said .

  In fact, not only in our country, but Sibutr has already been "blacklisted" in many countries.

According to public information, sibutramine was approved to be marketed in the United States in 1997. It was once an important raw material for making weight-loss drugs. However, in European countries, some people suffered liver damage and even death due to the consumption of such weight-loss products.

In 2009, research results showed that sibutramine can increase cardiovascular risks, including non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke, resuscitable cardiac arrest, and cardiovascular death.

As early as October 30, 2010, the relevant state departments have announced that the domestic production, sales and use of sibutramine preparations and APIs have been stopped, their approval documents have been revoked, and the manufacturers have been responsible for recalling and destroying drugs that have been on the market.

  However, the Beijing Youth Daily reporter also found that on some chemical websites, there are still companies selling sibutramine as a raw material.

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  There are unexplained weight loss "health products" on the e-commerce platform

  At present, can the weight-loss foods sold by e-commerce and we-commerce shops be safe to eat?

A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily searched for the keyword "diet food" on the Taobao platform. Among the products that popped up on the homepage, except for some health foods that indicated ingredients and "tablet candies", "enzymes", and "coffee" that claimed to have weight-loss effects, There is also a category of diet foods that are "unclear" in the product introduction.

  A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily randomly opened one of the Taobao stores.

Unlike ordinary shops that sell diet foods, there is no product introduction in the introduction of this shop. The picture shows various capsules and pills in different colors and the words "just one pill for full stomach". The purchase instructions also only There are content such as the number of pills corresponding to different colors.

There are only three bottles of different colors with inward labels in relation to the outer packaging of the product.

  In another Taobao store, in addition to changing the color of the pill from pink to green in the previous store, the only outer packaging that can display the product information was also smeared out by the seller.

  When a reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily asked as a consumer what product it was, the first thing he got was that the customer service "can't read it back".

The second said, "I understand everything you know about the'old medicine jar'", but I didn't reply any more if I continued to ask questions.

  A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily also found that on some e-commerce platforms, there are some diet foods that have health care product batch numbers but cannot be identified.

For example, a product called "Qiaoqiao Capsule" is labeled with different packages in different stores and has different brands, but they all claim to be health products with batch numbers.

A reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily found through the special food information query platform that "Qiancaitang Qiaoqiao Capsules" does have health food approvals, but on the e-commerce platform, "Qiancaitang Qiaoqiao Capsules" are not "Qiancaitang" The product of this brand is the product whose full name is "Qiancaitang Brand Qiaoqiao Capsule". There are also multiple "brands" on the e-commerce platform: including companies related to the health care product company applying for registration Brands such as "Vidolet" and "Kyoto Anshuntang" have been launched, and it is almost difficult to find brands such as "Cangfurui" and "Hanshuo" that are related to enterprises.

When a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily asked about the latter's health care product registration number, the relevant customer service said that it was on the outer packaging of the product, but they did not have the actual product, so they could not help with the inquiry.

  Text / reporter Zhang Xin

  Coordinator/Yu Meiying

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  Sibutramine is not the only banned ingredient

  Respect science for weight control

  The popular science public account Guo Huo once published an article saying that the prohibited ingredients in weight-loss drugs are not just sibutramine, some cause diarrhea, stimulate nerves, suppress appetite, and even become "skinny" in livestock meat. "Meat essence" has been found to be illegally added to some diet foods.

And some drugs that have passed the national approval and are sold as weight-loss drugs on the market, such as orlistat, are not as letting people "lie down" as the public imagined.

At the same time, these drugs have some side effects that affect the intestines and cannot be ignored.

  Zhu Yi, associate professor of the School of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University, once said that for obesity caused by some diseases, drugs and surgical treatments are effective, but they must be carried out under the guidance of professional doctors, rather than buying illegally added drugs to lose weight. This has a very big health risk.

  Gu Zhongyi, a well-known nutritionist, said that the key to losing weight is to pay attention to your lifestyle, shut your mouth and open your legs.

Generally speaking, it is necessary to combine exercise and diet control, and one cannot expect to lose weight without exercise.

In addition to burning calories, exercise can also reduce stress, improve insulin levels, and reduce the presence of cortisol.

Cortisol is a hormone that increases abdominal fat accumulation. Decreasing cortisol is also helpful in reducing abdominal fat.