B. Discussion
1. The different media influence on taking medicines to loss weight:
a) Television
TV is the direct channels to transfer the message to the people that are the effective way to affect the customer. The medicine’s producers like to use this kind of channel to promote their slimming pills. Customer will be attracted by these advertisements due to the company always shows the positive sides of their product. It easily causes the misconception of taking medicines to loss weight.
b) Pop star:
Nowadays, many medicines producer always invited pop star or celebrities to represent the product in order to show the product is effective. For example, GiGi Leung is the representative of FANCL HOUSE. She always says that slimming product of above company is effective in advance. From our research shows that people buy these slimming products based on their “idol” in high probability because consumer always likes to imitate and follow their “idol”. Actually, the consumer does not know whether these slimming products are suitable for them or not.
c) Magazine:
You can find that a huge amount of magazines have slimming pill’s advertising no matter what kind of magazine. There are a lot of posters related to taking medicines to loss weight. Some companies not only promote their product in the public magazine, but also use their brand name to publish their own booklet in order to promote their product, such as the FANCL HOUSE.
d) Films:
Some firms nowadays use “weight loss” for their topic that it has a factor using slimming pills. “My Left Eye Sees Ghosts” is an example. In this film, the girl was encouraged to take slimming pills when she eating too much. It is obviously that people are used to take the medicines to keep fit and reshape their body to an ideal one.
e) Advertisement:
In recent year, there are a lot of advertisements about weight loss around you, the poster in the street, the magazines, billboards, etc. All such factor probably exists in everywhere that seems to stress you to buy that product. In addition, the company would give the free gift or sample to the customer trying to use their product in order to promote their product.
2. Effect on people
a. Health damage
As the popularity of the weight loss medicine increases within these two or three years, the cases about health hazards due to these pills rise accordingly. The side effects of taking these medicines include reducing energy, diarrhea, organ damage, and even death.
We admit some diet pill products may contain ingredients that can reduce the amount of fat in the body, but more products are actually laxative or using other ways to decrease the water level inside. Thus they give the illusion to the consumer that they are slimmer after taking them. However, the constant loss of water inside the body will damage our health, slow down metabolism and affect the normal life. For example, need to sleep for long time in order to recover.
Apart from reducing energy, some diet pills contain ingredients that are banned in Hong Kong or proved to be unsafe to use for long time. According to Choice magazine, 12 weight loss products sold in Hong Kong contains these drugs: Ephedrine, Fenfluramine and Amfepramone. They may cause damage to body organs like heart, lung and liver.
On 27th July, 2002, SCMP reported a young Hong Kong woman need to undergo a liver transplant to save her life after taking weight loss medicine. Her doctor suspected the pills she took caused the liver failure. In the similar time, more than four hundreds people in Japan suffered illness after taking Chinese slimming products, four of them died and over hundreds of patients needed to stay in hospital due to organ damages.
Again from SCMP on 24th November, 2002, a news titled as “Diet drug recalled over heart fears”, the assistant director of Health departments urged people to stop taking a diet product and see doctor if they have developed symptoms of heart impairment.
There are many incidents similar to the above two news. Consumers should take great care to compare the products and make a good choice to avoid becoming another victim in these tragedies.
b. Economical burden
According to Choice Magazine issue 301, the selling price of the slimming products range from several tenth dollars to over thousand dollars. From these data, we calculated the average cost is about six hundred dollars per month. This is also comparable to the result we found in the survey. All of the interviewees who are taking weight loss medicine spend over two hundred dollars per month on the products and one third of them even spend more than four hundred dollars.
Furthermore, many products require the users to take a continuous period of time like three months or up to half year in order to finish one set of weight loss treatment. According to the ACNielsen’s survey reported by SCMP on 25th September, 2002, two per cent of women who took part in commercial weight loss programs spent nine per cent of their monthly income to do so. Under the economical downtime in Hong Kong, taking these slimming products certainly raise the economical burden to them. In the extreme cases, consumers who are unemployed may use their credit cards or overdrafts to pay for the weigh loss products in order to finish the whole set of treatments. They need to bare extra financial cost including the interest fees.
c. Addiction
According to John Hicks, “The drug-dependent user, or addict, no longer has the choice of whether or not to use. Being dependent on a substance is much like an infant being dependent upon its mother…When the addict’s or infant’s needs aren’t met, there is discomfort and a feeling of emptiness and pain.” (87). Although slimming pills are not illegal drugs in most cases, the users may not realize that they have already “addicted” to them. They may have some behaviors that are similar to what John describes the addicts do. In other words, they rely on these medicines to lose weight, without doing normal exercise and having the healthy diet to keep fit. They may feel uncomfortable if they stop taking these pills in one day. Although most of these feeling are only psychological effect, we should take great care not to heavily rely on these slimming pills.
C. Conclusion:
In our group’s opinion, we are open-mined about people take slimming pills to lose weight. Nowadays, there are different kind of slimming product that are widely used and it becomes the trend and fashion in Hong Kong. We can obviously find that many people used to take slimming pills whatever they are working class or student. In fact, it is unhealthy for people are too slim that people should take serious consideration before buying slimming products. In addition, the recommendation of professional can be also considered.
D. Works Cited
Bauer, Joy. The complete idiot's guide to eating smart. New York: Alpha Books,1996.
Benitez, May Ann. “Actress’ slimming pills banned in Guangzhou.” South China Morning Post 18 July 2002.
Button, Victoria. “Women diet to dangerous levels.” South China Morning Post 25 Sept. 2002.
Consumer Council. “Test uncovers non-disclosure and inconsistency in labelling of detoxifying and slimming products.” Choice Magazine 301(Nov. 2002): 12-24.
Current News. “Fenfluramine can kill people.” Sun Newspaper 23 August 2002.
Current News. “Tayukehon angry with Chinese fitness medicine.” Sun Newspaper 23 August 2002.
Current News. “Seven of HK people were ill by eating fitness medicine and hurt their heart.” 23 August 2002.
Drohan, Michele Ingber. Weight-loss programs : - weighing the risks and realities. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1998.
Fetrow, Charles W. The complete guide to herbal medicines. Springhouse, Pa. : Springhouse Corp., 2000.
Hicks, John. Drug Addiction: no way I’m an addict. Brookfield, Connecticut: Millbrook Press. 1997.
Lee, Ella. “Doctor blames liver failure on slimming pills.” South China Morning Post 27 July 2002
Moy, Pasty. “Ancient Chinese slimming secrets rejected as myth.” South China Morning Post 26 July 2002.
Schwartz, Susan. “Slimmers want pills, not fruit.” South China Morning Post 8 May 2002.
E. Appendix (Main results of the questionnaire)
The situation of using weight loss medicine among HKU SPACE students
1. Percentage of people using weight loss medicine
From the graph, it indicates that large proportions of students are using weight losing pills for keeping fit. (58%) Among the users, 12 of them are males and 17 are females. It shows that the use of weight loss medicines is becoming more and more popular and it is worthy to investigate this situation.
2. Types of medicine used when the users decide to loss weight.
From the pie chart above, it indicates that the main type of medicines used is Natural preservative free medicines, 35% of users claimed that they used this kind of slimming pill. The main reason for them to use this kind of drugs is that they think these products do not contain any unnatural preservative, so that it is safer for them to use. On the other hand, Western medicine also plays an important role, about 25% of users said that they this kind of drugs. They may think that doctors approve most Western medicines. Although this kind of medicines may contain some harmful element, they think it is safe to take them. Moreover, the third largest group of medicine used is Chinese medicines. For decades, Chinese medicines are considered to be unproved. However, it is most efficient and effective. Therefore, people always take a risk.
3. The motives of losing weight among slimming pills users
(This question allow interviewees to tick more than one choice)
After the survey, it implies that people of different sex have different opinions of slimming. Therefore, we are going to analyze the motivating factors according to sexual difference. From the graph, it can be clearly seen that males’ motives of weight losing is quite different from that of females’.
For males, all users think that their motive for using these pills is just for fitness. 10 out of 12 users considered health is also an important factor, others loss weigh because of peer recognition and medical factors.
Compare with males, the main motivating factor of females is completely different. The majority of females said that the purpose for them to keep fit is peer recognition. This may due to the fact that females are more concern their body shape than males. 10 out of 17 claimed that they loss weigh for fitness and others said that they do that for health.
4. Amount that the users spend for buying the pills each month.
The implications of this chat that the majority of users spends $400 to $600 to buy these products (60%),by the far the largest portion of users spend less than $800 each month(94%), a minority of users only spend more than $800 to buy this kind of medicines(6%). Therefore, the result of this survey is different from the “CHOICE MAGAZINE” which claimed that the users of weigh loss medicines spend more than one thousand Hong Kong Dollars each month. This shows that the main users of slimming pills are the working population but not the students.
5. Medium for users to get the information
How did the users get the information of weigh losing medicine? The main source of information is mass media. 16 out of 29 users claimed that they found the information either from television or radio broadcast. Others knew these products from newspapers, advertisement and other forms of media. 5 out of 29 said that they use the product just because their idol uses it, so they follow. The minorities knew the product just because the products are popular.