In Salon.com’s Broadsheet section, there’s an article about alli, the new diet pill that’s wildly popular and stratospherically expensive. In a nutshell, this is the new pill that’s been introduced that binds to fat you eat so that your body cannot absorb and metabolize it, and therefore can’t store it. It’s essentially the lazier, less-accomplished, OTC sister of Xenical, the prescription drug.
It’s crazy expensive — about $60 for a one-month supply — and it has a long list of incredibly interesting ‘treatment effects’ (called ’side effects’ to anyone outside of ad agencies) that, if you’re not the one experiencing them, are downright amusing. That is, if you find grown, otherwise normal and healthy adults shitting their pants amusing. More on that later.
We’ve reached a point in our civilization where it’s acceptable to have a pill for everything. To make people who aren’t on half a dozen drugs feel like a minority. To advertise prescription drugs like you would a watch or a new car on primetime TV with 60 second, high-production-value commercials. Attractive people doing fun, healthy things everywhere.
Welcome to the age of direct-to-consumer prescription drug marketing. If you’ve any lingering doubts this time is upon us, consider the fact that druggists can’t keep alli on store shelves. Even among drugstore managers, alli is a phenomenon.
Americans always want the shortcut. It’s the allure of instant gratification. Do real work? Experience the journey instead of just the destination? No way. Gimme my lifestyle enhancement now — I have no time to indulge in any means to the end. Even if it means there’s a very strong chance I’ll shit my pants somewhat regularly. More on that later.
It was one thing when companies lied to you about a detergent’s ability to remove grass stains from a child’s jeans; it’s quite another when drug companies are selling you a pill that’s unnecessary and essentially causes you to shit your pants. If you’re not shitting your pants, you’re farting oil. If you’re not farting oil, you’re worried about loose stools that may be ‘hard to control.’
You’re a fecal nightmare. And you’re paying $60 per month for this privilege.
It’s fucking crazy that this has become an acceptable trade-off for a drug that, at best, would shave 225 calories from a diet of 3000 calories and 100 grams of fat per day. And that does nothing for the typically massive carbohydrate dose that most Americans eat every day.
What follows is a plain-English translation of alli’s treatment effects section. Nothing quoted has been made up or altered in any way.
alli™ works by preventing the absorption of some of the fat you eat. The fat passes out of your body, so you may have bowel changes, known as treatment effects. You may get:
* gas with oily spotting
* loose stools
* more frequent stools that may be hard to control
I don’t know a single person in my life who would look at this list of side effects and say, “You know, I’m down with that. I’m willing to take the chance of being at work or out with my friends and farting oil into my pants. Or losing control and shitting myself entirely. It’s no big deal.”
The crazier, more complex option is to reduce fat and carbohydrate intake and educate yourself about what real nutrition is. You’ll save 60 bucks a month and avoid pants-shitting entirely. But that’s crazy talk. Pardon my transgression.
The excess fat that passes out of your body is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.
Awesome. There’s the visual we were all looking for. The oil (fat) that goes unmetabolized in your body thanks to alli shows up in your toilet as pizza oil. How’d that marketing meeting go?
AD EXEC 1: So, about the oil. It’s going to show up in their toilet, and it’s gonna freak them out. How do we position this?
AD EXEC 2: Let’s just tell them how it is. Nobody reads the side effects page anyway. They’re too lazy.
AD EXEC 1: (gesturing with hands) These people are going to go into the bathroom and shit a thin film of oil atop god knows how much loose stool. We have to position this, man. Give them the context!
AD EXEC 2: True. Good point. (pause) What can these people relate to?
AD EXEC 1: Well, most will be fat, lazy, undisciplined and a slave to food. So…
AD EXEC 2: …food metaphor?
AD EXEC 1: (pounds table with fist) Bingo baby. What’s oily and looks like food?
AD EXEC 2: (scratches chin) How about those little pools of orange oil that sit on top of pizza?
AD EXEC 1: (brightens) Brilliant! We’ve just taken the idea of shitting raw, undigested fat into a toilet and made it acceptable by equating it with food, which is exactly what our demographic can relate to.
AD EXEC 2: (leans back in his chair, beaming) We’re fucking magic, man. We are.
AD EXEC 1: (pauses) Or are our customers just profoundly stupid?
AD EXEC 2: (thinks)
AD EXEC 1: Don’t answer that. We’re magic!
[they high-five]
Learning how to manage treatment effects is an important part of being successful with alli. Here’s how to take control:
Welcome to the lifestyle enhancer that has such severe side effects that they need to be managed. Or you won’t be successful. Here’s how to prepare yourself for your new life in which you will live under the constant spectre of uncontrollable shitting.
Start trimming fat from your diet now, even before you begin taking alli. Then pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a treatment effect. Make the timing work for you. If you’re getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over.
Look, YOU ARE GOING TO SHIT YOURSELF despite the fact that you’re a grown adult and, presumably, have done enough things right in your life that you can afford $60/month for a pill that’s not going to do much except make you shit yourself. So, come on, be realistic about it. Do this on a weekend so you don’t shit yourself at work. Stay close to a bathroom so that when you find yourself uncontrollably shitting oil into your pants, you can start to clean up right away.
You have to be realistic about this, plan for it. Don’t just run off willy-nilly and think that this pill you’re taking is okay. Because — and we can’t stress this enough — you will shit your pants, probably more than once. Sometimes even when you don’t know it’s happening.
But at least you don’t have to work out! Think about it that way! When you’re not shitting your pants or farting droplets of oil into your undergarments, make sure you point at those losers in spinning class and laugh.*
(*but not too hard or you might shit yourself.)
While no one likes experiencing treatment effects, they might help you think twice about eating questionable fat content. If you think of it like that, alli can act like a security guard for your late-night cravings.
If you were thinking twice about eating questionable fat content, you wouldn’t need to be taking an expensive pill that makes you incontinent. But you’re lazy as fuck, and we don’t want our pill to get a bad rap, so we’d appreciate it if you’d watch your fat consumption so that your uncontrollable pants-shitting doesn’t get too out of control. We have media and press to manage. Thanks.
Oh, and about the ’security guard’ bit. Yeah, essentially we’re using the side effect of shitting your pants almost randomly as a vague threat to make you curb your eating behavior. But you don’t mind, do you? Didn’t think so. Sucker.
You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.
We are SO SURE THAT YOU WILL SHIT YOURSELF TO A CATASTROPHIC DEGREE that we are suggesting, with a very sober web page, that you wear dark pants so that others won’t immediately recognize that you, a grown adult, have shat your pants like a three-year-old. Also, having a change of clothes on-hand is probably a good idea, because once you’ve shit yourself, no amount of Kleenex dabbing will fix the mess. Trust us. We had test subjects try and everyone still noticed.
You may not usually get gassy, but it’s a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens.
If you feel like you’re going to fart, heads up. alli completely rewires your bowels to an incredibly unnatural extent such that if you feel like you need to fart, YOU WILL WIND UP SHITTING whether you want to or not. Our advice: be in the bathroom. Think of pizza. Thank you. We appreciate your business.
So there’s your warning page, cleverly repackaged as ‘treatment effects’. This is what we’ve come to. Big pharma builds a drug that makes people literally shit their pants at nearly-random intervals, and it flies off store shelves.
I’m all of out things to say.
I think I’m in the wrong business though. That’s for sure.
24 responses so far ↓
C // June 23, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I’ve been on it for a week. I haven’t crapped my pants, farted oil, spontaneously combusted, grown an extra leg. So it’s really no big deal. Will I buy it again next month? Maybe not. But unless you’re eating a whole large pizza in one sitting, I don’t see any of these side effects really happening.
Jeff Ventura // June 23, 2007 at 5:40 pm
@C: give it time. Or try a higher-fat meal. You’re only a few grams of fat away from a solid pants-shitting. Even alli’s own website says that, quite tacitly.
Honestly, kidding aside, stay off of that stuff. There are easier and faster and better ways to get healthy, and none of them involve pills or sudden incontinence.
Tom // June 23, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Jeff,
Great piece. Funny as Hell, but also frightening that they’d warn you about this stuff with a straight face.
Jason Lefkowitz // June 24, 2007 at 10:40 am
Oh man, this post is too, too funny! Well done.
David // June 24, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Yeah, nice post Jeff. Food for thought … sorry … maybe more like
CRAP for thought!
OMFG. One hardly knows where to begin … I don’t want to offend anyone who is struggling with excess weight, yes, it is a struggle and a source of great pain for many (not funny), but “myalli.com” is really forcing us to stoop to their level. To be fair, they do advise some caution on their overview page:
“But if you aren’t committed to limiting your fat intake and calories as part of the program, then you shouldn’t buy alli. Not right now. If the timing isn’t right for you, come back to myalli.com in the future to learn more about alli.
I guess they feel that if they say “you shouldn’t buy alli” (advertising suicide), that it will sorta pass for sincerity. Not that sincerity is honesty.
WHAT A FUCKING DREAM COME TRUE!! AT LAST!! A PIG-OUT PILL!! (Pardon, but Jeff dropped the F-bomb already … )
Eat yourself silly, then pop this pill, and all that crap you ate will just pass on through … Like bulemia, but at the other end!
Those ad execs truly ARE magic! Not only do they sell us that CRAPFOOD to begin with, but now they have for us A PILL for $2/day to counteract the CRAPFOOD!
What a wonderful world it is!
Renee // June 24, 2007 at 7:44 pm
It’s ad guys like these that give the whole business a bad rep and make me feel dirty.
(Not shit in my pants dirty, but dirty)
Nice translation, Jeff.
Jo // June 24, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Weight loss isn’t a lot different from any other part of us we’d like to change. People want it now, and they want it to be easy. Saying that it takes time and you have to work for it doesn’t go over well, and it doesn’t sell anything.
hopefulgirl // June 24, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the take on things.
Also, I like your line about “experiencing the journey instead of just the destination”.
Lose bowel control, lose weight at ask-mark.com // June 25, 2007 at 12:59 am
[...] Update: In the comments, Jeff Venture posted a link to a similar post. [...]
beanie // June 25, 2007 at 3:52 am
Jeff wrote:
“wildly popular and and stratospherically expensive”
Must have consulted with the Apple iPhone marketing team. Xenical’s patent expires in 2009, prices should come down then since others can come out with generic version. Seems to be cheaper than the prescription drug.
Xenical costs $242.67 for 100 pills at Costco.
Alli is half the dosage of Xenical. Prescription drugs usually have similar pricing regardless of dosage.
Jeff wrote:
“225 calories from a diet of 3000 calories and 100 grams of fat per day”
100 grams sounds wrong, that would be 800 calories. I think a typical American consumes 100 grams of fat per day in a 3000 calories per day diet. So the pill can block about 25% of fat or 25 grams. Fat has about 8 calories per gram, so 25 grams of fat blocked times 8 calories per gram equals 200 calories.
Anyway, pill manufacturer suggests reducing fat to 15 grams per meal to reduce side effects. If you do that then there is no need to take the pill.
It is better to eat sensibly.
Foods to avoid which Bob Greene says:
1. Soda (high fructose corn syrup)
(Avoid artificial sweetened also since it reinforces very sweet tastes.)
2. Foods with Trans Fats/hydrogenated fats
3. Fried foods (too high in calories)
4. White bread (instead, whole grains with high fiber)
5. Regular pasta (instead, whole grain with omega 3)
6. High-fat dairy products (no whole milk)
(instead, 1% fat or non-fat)
More on Fat Blockers, and the Havoc They Wreak (in Your Pants). « REALITY ON A STICK // June 25, 2007 at 3:37 pm
[...] June 25th, 2007 · No Comments One of my favorite tech and life-perspective bloggers, Jeff Ventura of Graceful Flavor, dropped by to let realityonastick readers know about his recent rant on your favorite topic: alli, which is easily the most explosive fad drug to hit the market. Jeff’s writing is riddled with sarcasm and humor, and yet he never fails to offer a level-headed take on the big picture issues. You can find his reaction to the Salon.com alli post here on his blog. [...]
pamela » Alli blog // June 25, 2007 at 11:45 pm
[...] Still trying to find info on Alli and came across this blog. I take it this blogger doesn’t or hasn’t ever struggled with a weight issue but I still thought the blog was funny. What do you think? http://gracefulflavor.net/2007/06/23/translation-from-marketing-speak-to-plain-english-of-allis-weig... [...]
More thoughts on alli. « GracefulFlavor // June 26, 2007 at 10:00 am
[...] 26th, 2007 · No Comments After discussing alli’s insane ‘treatment effects’, I began to think about how the pill works with people who take it for weight loss. The mechanics [...]
Stephanie // July 9, 2007 at 3:20 am
I got to this site by way of a link on a friend’s page. This was a hilarious post! Very funny.
Jennifer // July 9, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Gotta wonder if the company that produces Alli also produces Depends undergarments, or any anti-diarrheal medications (Loperamide, etc.)
Sell the problem…then sell the cure.
James // July 13, 2007 at 4:08 am
I have been taking it for 2 weeks and it really isn’t that bad….It makes you feel like you have to go to the bathroom and unless your asshole is built like the Lincoln tunnel you shouldn’t have a problem holding it until you go to the bathroom….So stop carrying on like a bitch especially if you’re not even taking it!
Slim Tim // November 14, 2007 at 9:03 pm
I have not laugh so hard, so loud, for so long!!! Thanks for the outrageous editing……
Melly // January 11, 2008 at 2:25 am
I guess they could market it to use on bad dates. The guy is rude and annoying at dinner, pop an Alli and order the fattiest food on the menu and then hit him with a shit blast when you stand up.
I enjoyed reading this thanks!
Jim // January 14, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I’ve been taking it for 2 weeks now as well. The only side effect I’ve noticed is that my shit is more like pudding than it used to be. Nothing uncontrollable. Nothing explosive. However, I started on a low fat, low calorie diet at the same time, so I don’t the pill is really doing anything if I’m not eating any fat. I’ll probably stop taking it next month and keep with my diet.
The Secrets of Success in Roughly Eight Words and Three Minutes « GracefulFlavor // January 15, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] January 15, 2008 · No Comments If you’ve ever wondered what makes successful people successful (hint: not bionics), then you’ve probably heard the recipe is actually mostly common sense and very few shortcuts. (But, please, don’t tell dieters.) [...]
Mandy // February 28, 2008 at 11:27 am
I totally disagree. 225 calories and 100 grams a fat a day being saved is significant, especially for a woman.
I see the pizza oil in the toilet, and I have never shit myself.
I eat healthy, and work out 1hr+ daily, so its not “a shortcut” for me, its a SUPPLEMENT. Its helping me reach my goals, not totally doing the work for me, and for that, I applaud it.
Courtney // March 5, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I’ve been on alli a month and so far I have been disappointed by my lack of pants-shitting episodes. Maybe I eat too healthy. I do LOVE the oil in the toilet though. Sometimes it’s orange, sometimes it’s brown, but it’s always GLORIOUS.
Cyn // March 10, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Maybe my math is wrong… but I don’t think I am: each gram of fat is 9 calories. So blocking 100 grams of fat per day is a whopping 900 calories. Just wanted to point that out….
macy // April 27, 2008 at 2:30 am
this is some what good for revenge on some girls you got issue with. slip her an alli pills take her to a public place or to a carnival, order some greasy food and watch the slut explode with diarrhea in her pant. ask her to wear white pant that day haha
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