Anti-aging pill fail: RezV

Today I got some new spam in my inbox: this time, it’s for RezV, a supplement pill containing resveratrol, a substance largely touted as being found in red wine.

The body of the e-mails says, in big letters: “discover how YOU can live to be 150″

When you go to their website, you’re greeted with a video of an Oprah (Pseudoscience Queen) segment, where a very hyperactive dude with creepy eyebrows hawks a bunch of green horse pills that apparently contains a concentration of resveratrol. You’ll also find the logos of USA Today, NBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Fox News, CBS, People, NBC (again?), Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, and PBS.

Their moneyback guarantee:

MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
We are so confident that you will love RezV that we are not only going to give you a free trial period for the full month supply, but a RISK FREE 14 day money back guarantee. You will have 14 days from the date of your order to evaluate the product. If you decide you are unhappy with the product, cancel at any time during that 14 day period and pay nothing except shipping and handling. If you do not cancel, you will receive every 30 days a fresh one-month supply of RezV as part of our delivery program, for which you will be automatically billed $87.97 per month (a 21% savings off the regular price!) There are no obligations, and you can
cancel at anytime via our customer support line.

Since when does  “RISK FREE” mean that if you don’t cancel within 14 days of placing your order (which means that if it takes a week to get from their warehouse to your doorstep, you have 7 days to try it) you’ll be automatically billed $90+ per month. It seems to me that purchasing your “free trial” comes with the risk of your credit card being charged if you don’t hop up and call the customer service line – and you know that they are going to try to convince you to keep using their product.

Oh come on Ziztur, you say, they can’t really mean that the 14 day trial period begins from the moment you order it, can they? Yep, it says as much under “Terms & Conditions”:

14 DAY TRIAL PERIOD INCLUDES SHIPPING AND TRANSIT TIME

Some of the “testimonials” on the website are just frightening. Take “Kelly Ann’s” Testimonial:

My muscle tone is so much more firm, especially around my waist area, without actually having to work out.

 Oh shit! She’s had a brain injury! Abnormal muscle tone is a sign of serious central nervous system dysfunction. I have to recommended that she stop taking her placebopills and see a real doctor.

Studies on humans have shown that even in doses much higher than the pull form offered (5 grams vs 20-200mg, depending on who is hawking it) did… nothing. The headline-grabbing Harvard study, published in 2006, showed that obese, middle aged mice who had resveratrol added to their high-calorie, high-fat diet became healthier and lived longer. A similar study, published later by the same researchers, showed that middle-aged healthy mice fed regular diets did not live longer or have increased health when given resveratrol vs. a placebo. [1] There are no studies showing that resveratrol has any positive affect on humans, though there are studies showing that it increased the lifespan of some fish, a fruit fly, and a type of worm. Yet before appropriate studies can be conducted on humans, countless pill-peddling companies are selling their supplements for unforgivably expensive prices.

It’s funny that all of the websites and videos show people drinking red wine, or show pictures of red wine, and talk about how the compound is found in red wine, but most (all?) resveratrol supplements are not made from wine or grapes (or peanuts, which also contains resveratrol) but japanese knotweed. I guess it doesn’t sound quite as enticing and sophisticated to say your supplement is derived from  Japanese knotweed as it does to say it’s from red wine.

All of this red-wine-makes-you-healthier stuff comes from the idea of the French Paradox – wherein the French supposedly consume a diet higher in saturated fats, but have less heart disease than Americans – a 60 Minutes show in 1991 suggested that this was due to the French’s consumption or red wine. Even the Wikipedia article on the subject suggests that the French Paradox is an overblown case of misplaced causation. The idea has been debunked with research by … ironically … some researchers in France. The French Paradox has also been debunked by statisticians – but this doesn’t stop weight-loss companies from continuing to use it to their advantage.

1. Schard, D. Nutrition Action Health Letter; Mar2009, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p9-9, 3/5p, 1 color