Kevin Trudeau to Jail for Weight Loss Book. Is he a Journalist?

The consumer activist of Natural Cures, Kevin Trudeau, may be going to prison for saying weight loss is easy.

According to his email sent to subscribers of his website, authorities are after his head for his weight loss book that says weight loss is easy and that he needs financial support for his defense. November 4 this year will be his trial.

Trudeau has lined up a series of fund-raising activities that includes seminars, a private dinner, one-hour personal coaching, and energy-work sessions with payment ranging from $500 to $25,000 in an effort to pool resources for the KT Legal Defense as shown in the email. The announcement says the seminar and dinner respectively may take place tentatively on October 20 and October 21, this year, but both are subject to change or cancellation.

Trudeau wrote Natural Cures "They" Don’t want You to Know About, published by Alliance Publishing Group, Inc in 2004.  Already his flap cover carries accusations posed into questions: " Did you know that the medical profession, in partnership with the chemical industry, has a huge interest in keeping you sick rather than healing you? Do you realize that the Federal Government is doing everything in its power - and some things well beyond its stated power - to keep all of this a secret?" These accusations remain thematic throughout the 273 pages book.

In 2006, emboldened by his first book, published by the same company Trudeau wrote a thicker book of 358 pages, More Natural "Cures" Revealed. This time the flap cover announces that the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has censored his first book. "That book still saved lives," he wrote.

In the second book, More Natural Cures Revealed, Trudeau claimed for the first time that he had been a "secret covert operative for almost 20 years" which is why from personal experience, " Kevin knows how big business and government try to debunk individuals who promote products that could hurt the profits of the giant multi- national corporations."

What about the weight loss issue that the email claimed may send Kevin Trudeau to jail? The first book, Natural Cures, carries a Chapter 8, titled, How to Lose Weight Effortlessly and Keep it Off Forever. In 10 pages, Trudeau suggested 30 ways like drinking a glass of water upon rising in the morning, eating a big breakfast, drinking distilled water each day, walking for at least one hour a day, not eating after six p.m.;

- Doing a Candida cleanse, a colon cleanse; eating organic grapefruits all day, taking no aspartame or any artificial sweeteners, shunning away from monosodium glutamate (MSG),  taking digestive enzymes, taking no diet sodas or diet food;

- Not eating in fast food or chain restaurants, taking no high fructose corn syrup, white sugar or white flour.

The other half of Trudeau's recommendations include eating organic apples all day, eating only organic poultry and fish, limiting dairy products, doing a liver cleanse, eating a huge salad at lunch and dinner, doing rebounds, adding hot peppers to meals, using organic apple cider vinegar;

- Breathing enough, wearing magnetic finger rings, getting colonics in 15 days, adding muscle, fasting, cheating whenever you want; and reducing or eliminating the uncontrollable urge to eat when not hungry.

The second book contains Chapter 9 titled, Weight Loss Secrets, and is only 7 pages long. He recommended eating organic beef, lamb, and chicken. Of fish, wild salmon, sardines, tuna. Of fruits, organic grapefruit, apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries, plume, peaches, apricots.

Then he said, Stay away from bananas, they have a tendency to make you gain weight.  He then gave his common breakfast: scrambled eggs, smoked salmon or lamb chop, or sardines, or a small steak.

In two fat paragraphs, Trudeau wrote about Organic, Unrefined Virgin Coconut Oil. "All you do is take one tablespoon in the morning and one tablespoon in the late afternoon." He followed it up with assurance. “If you do this every day for 30 days, here is what you could find.  High blood pressure can be a thing of the past. Circulation problems vanish. Mood swings, gone. Depression, lifted. Constipation, cured. Arthritis pain, reduced or eliminated. Cancer, in remission. Cholesterol normalized. Acid reflux and heartburn, diminished and gone forever."

"Oh, and here is a major side effect: If you are overweight, you will probably lose ten pounds!"  Describing organic, unrefined virgin coconut oil as having a "dramatic, positive effect on the body for its overwhelming health- giving properties," he said his pants were falling off after three days of taking this oil.

Other things Trudeau recommended in passing were digestive enzymes, salsa, raw organic apple cider vinegar, Yerba Mata tea.

Kevin Trudeau claimed he is "just a journalist" doing some reporting. From the two books he wrote, is Trudeau a journalist, considered a journalist? By being such, he is covered by some rights protection as in freedom to expose information for the protection of the public. But in being journalist, there are expectations in as simple as awareness of audience needs.

What he had written, Trudeau said, are only medical opinions because "there are no medical facts" (Natural Cures, p. 8).

What reporting Trudeau actually did is about the musical chairs made by FTC honchos in order to prove tie-ups between them and Big Pharma and point to himself as victim. But his title is about Natural Cures although he prints cures with quotation marks. Naturally, he is bound to, as a "journalist," back up his cures with enough information, and information that is tightly bound to research. Due to the nature of the subject matter, Trudeau can safely be concluded as doing a tourist approach to it while making money on the side. Throughout his books, he would write, "Go to my site at naturalcures.com. I can't tell you everything here." But when you go there, you cannot read everything. You got to pay.

The danger in Kevin Trudeau's work is not in exposing fraud or whatever he thinks is fraud for the benefit of the public. It is the practice of something that requires many years of study against his cavalier confidence of an absolute truth. And writing his prescriptions or recommendations as cures or "cures," the way he does it does not help his audience in the long run. To him, it is like there are no limitations, no scope, no exemptions, no buts, and no ifs in his sweeping prescriptions and his promises of cure sounding like absolutes with no single research to boot.

Did he have the needs of his audience in mind? His Chapter 1 of his very first book talks about himself. "I Could Have Been Dead" is the title. Beginning with himself, true to its colors the whole book shows him running to his audience for protection now and then because authorities are after him.

His chapter on "How to Never Get Sick Again" is fairly advice but is mixed with funny prescriptions and proscriptions like, Don't read the Newspaper, Don't Watch the News. "My personal studies show that a person's pH can go from a healthy alkaline state, to the cancer-prone acidic taste just after 30 minutes of watching news broadcast,” Trudeau wrote.

The probable tie- up of the FTC and Big Pharma is not new revelation. As early as half-a-century ago, that had been feeder for the minds of readers. At the very least, Trudeau's task could have been substantially backing up his reporting (Read: Prescriptions) with facts. Then and there, he could have a world of journalists behind him.

The Virgin Coconut Oil that he named in his second book for weight loss for example, merely had him saying his pants were falling off after three days of taking the oil once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. Why? How? What is in this oil that made it so? Did he look into what research is saying about this commodity?

Others are better at mentioning the medium-chain fatty acids in VCO that explains why although it is saturated oil, it has certain overwhelming properties. Trudeau should have done research because a reader could mistake his cure as endless prescription. As oil is oil and has no fiber, what can happen to the body then?

From 2006 onwards, could Kevin Trudeau have written a whole book on weight loss? From his usual way of touch-and -go writing, Trudeau could not have pinned down the subject more than his perfunctory ways of writing prescriptions or recommendations. But suddenly and suddenly, not even a year after his second book, he wrote, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About by the same publishing house. He had stumbled on something – a giant leap from his prescriptions of virgin coconut oil and salsa and apple cider vinegar and Yerba Mata Tea.

 

Now, it is having to do with direct interventions with the body, particularly the hypothalamus. Now, it is use of herbal supplements and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) injections that the FTC claims are fraudulent measures. Wikipedia writes “The controversial book describes a plan to change activity in the hypothalamus gland, linked to the pituitary gland, with the intention to control hunger and regulation of fat cells, by using herbal supplements and repeated use of the hCG hormone.”

Where did Trudeau learn all of this in such a short span of time and write a book that made millions for himself?

Tradeau’s weight loss procedure is being compared to a 1950’s diet plan of British endocrinologist, Dr. A.T.W. Simeons according book reviews. If Dr. Simeons Diet has been highly criticized as dangerous to health, more so Kevin Trudeau’s weight loss cure – he who has no medical background.

From the time involved alone, with less than a year jump from one perspective on weight loss to another, one can see Kevin Trudeau is not personally into this thing even as a researcher. What is surer is that he is involved because of the money side of it – but never with some social responsibility to his audience needs. He is not a journalist.