After 7 seasons of winning the hearts of millions of Americans with its life-changing success stories of helping morbidly obese Americans lose weight until they’re only morosely obese, the hit reality show The Biggest Loser is now the target of intense scrutiny. Michael “Big Mike” Ventrella, biggest loser of Season 9 (Couples 3) and holder of the record for most weight lost in a season (14 lbs.), has just admitted to use of performance enhancing drugs during his time on the show, setting off a chain reaction of similar confessions from other contestants.
“I just gave in to temptation” said Michael “Venti” Ventrella when we met up with him at KFC, “after a couple of weeks I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to succeed without either cheating or actually exercising and eating less, so I really had no choice but to cheat.” In order to achieve such phenomenal results, in any given day Ventrelli had to go through two to three bottles of Lipozene, the drug of choice for many contestants, known to help reduce obesity by making its takers less fat.
In recent survey conducted among the shows contestants, a shocking 82% admitted to using performance enhancing drugs, while the other 36% claimed that they lost weight the natural way, bulimia. 43% claimed to have done both. “The pressure to use drugs to get ahead is just always there” says contestant Daniel “Big Danny” Cahill through a bite of egg salad, “and you justify it to yourself by saying it’s just unlocking your real potential. And making it okay to eat more. Mostly that.”
But does the blame lie completely on the heads of the losers? The losers don’t seem to think so. The losers blame the 99%; those who weigh less than 400 pounds, saying the 99% put pressure on them to conform to unrealistic ideals like weighing less than 400 pounds. Furthermore when confronted on the topic of exploiting fat people, COO of the Obesity Research Institute, maker of Lipozene, Jeffrey Dahlman, admitted to taking advantage of the losers. “We just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of reaching 20 morbidly obese individuals trying to lose weight as fast as possible all sharing a single, hopefully very sturdy home,” he confessed. “We bought out all of the local ad time on key channels such as Food Network, CMT, and the Oprah Winfrey Network and used it to push Lipozene.”
When confronted concerning this issue, NBC executives said they would start enforcing strict drug testing procedures. They plan to start checking the stool of all the competitors daily for dietary fiber, as glucomannan, the principal component of Lipozene, falls into the category of dietary fiber. Any loser with even an ounce of dietary fiber found in their stool will be immediately disqualified and publicly shamed.
-AJ ’14
