When the FDA announced a recall of Hydroxycut diet pills earlier this month, it joined the ranks of other popular weight-loss aids linked to serious health problems. Deaths attributable to Hydroxycut’s effect on the liver have only now been reported, but considering that the brand dominates the $1.7-billion diet-pill market — 9 million units of Hydroxycut were sold last year alone — its use is widespread.

Singer Britney Spears threatened to sue over this magazine advertisement for Zantrex-3 diet pills.

In a statement of the Hydroxycut website, the company said: “While this is a small number of reports relative to the many millions of people who have used Hydroxycut products over the years, out of an abundance of caution and because consumer safety is our top priority, we are voluntarily recalling these Hydroxycut-branded products.”

Diet-pill recalls are nothing new. They frequently have drawn recalls over the years because of a loophole in the regulation that allows them to be sold. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, passed in 1994, allows all kinds of dietary supplements to be sold over the counter without having to prove their safety or effectiveness. Furthermore, as long as a pill’s active ingredient is one that was approved as safe in 1994, the company doesn’t need to seek the FDA’s approval in selling the product.

Unfortunately, that does very little to protect consumer safety. Ephedra was a popular weight-loss aid throughout the 1990s in products like Dexatrim, but it wasn’t until 2004 that ephedra was banned due to dozens of deaths from heart attacks and strokes in regular users. 

That diet pills are possibly dangerous is old news. What is more interesting, however, is how reliant women’s magazines are on their ad revenue — and how certain it is that a new diet pill will come along to fill the vacuum left by Hydroxycut.

Ads for Hydroxycut and its clones are a mainstay in the back pages of fashion and entertainment magazines.

For example, in the May 18, 2009, edition of OK! Weekly, Page 77 features a full color ad of a toned blonde woman in a black bikini with the words “I Thought I Was Going to Be Fat Forever!” printed above her. The pill in question is Xenadrine RFA-1, sold at drugstores nationwide. The ad claims that the supplement’s effectiveness is backed up by “science you can trust,” without specifying what scientific claim they are making.

In 2003, singer Britney Spears threatened to sue the company that makes Zantrex-3 for using her photo in their magazine ad campaigns, suggesting she was a habitual user of their drug. The company in turn sued her back, and the ads continue to run.

As long as magazines continue to accept advertising dollars from questionable companies marketing these possibly dangerous drugs, more people will continue to buy them and put themselves at risk. If publishers truly want to get away from the perception that they contribute to negative body images among vulnerable young women, advertisements for such pills have no place in fashion magazines.