CC hypocrisy

It says right below this:

"Calorie Count's mission is to promote healthy and sustainable weight management."

However, Calorie Count has, for the longest time, shown ads for products that use fake numbers, misleading pictures, and basically just blatant false advertising.

On the page I'm currently on now, even, the ad at the bottom says "How I lost 1lb per day" It really wasn't that hard at all - no diet, no exercise! - Jessica

I don't think I have to tell any of you that 1lb per day is not healthy nor sustainable weight management. Most of the ads give similar ridiculous numbers and they're only out to sell a product that doesn't work and take peoples' money.

I understand it's your prerogative to display ads and make money off of the site, but the money you're making off those ads is a cut of the money that your userbase is spending on these products (Probably thinking.. "Hey, it's shown on calorie count, so I can probably trust it"..). So at the same time you so virulently state that you are here to ensure that people lose weight healthily and the right way, you simply become a benefactor of these weight loss schemes that obviously do not work nor do what they claim to do... and the one getting the short end of the stick are the people who are clicking on those ads.. the members of the calorie-count community. How can you be trying to help your users when you're providing a platform for these leeches to rob them? I wish CC would exercise some discretion in the ads that end up on their site... because some people don't realize that 1 lb a day is too much. I've even seen threads of people who bought those products because they saw them advertised on CC and assumed they would work.

Not to mention the extremely misleading methods of some of these ads.  For example, I just clicked on the ad that reads:

"#1 Diet Rule for 2009
Lose weight for the new year. Healthy recipes to start you diet.
allrecipes.com"

And it does not even link to allrecipes.com (which is a good site) AT ALL.  Instead, it links to what has been thoroughly documented as a fake "diet blog" that tries to sell you on the acai berry scam.  (Read here for more info about the fake diet blogs scams.)

ETA:  Now the allrecipes.com links to the right place.  But only after I tried it TWICE and got the scam site.  Weird!

Original Post by apophenia:

Not to mention the extremely misleading methods of some of these ads.  For example, I just clicked on the ad that reads:

"#1 Diet Rule for 2009
Lose weight for the new year. Healthy recipes to start you diet.
allrecipes.com"

And it does not even link to allrecipes.com (which is a good site) AT ALL.  Instead, it links to what has been thoroughly documented as a fake "diet blog" that tries to sell you on the acai berry scam.  (Read here for more info about the fake diet blogs scams.)

ETA:  Now the allrecipes.com links to the right place.  But only after I tried it TWICE and got the scam site.  Weird!

 Did you report it?????  Please read post #16 in this thread.  Talking about bad ads here is useless.   You need to tell the administration by using the contact link at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes it can be fixed, sometimes not. 

Please read the rest of the thread where you will learn that calorie-count does not have control about what ads are placed here.  They are sold bundled by ad companies. 

It is almost impossible to have advertising on a major site such as About.com without using an ad network. 

This means that Calorie Count and About.com have no control over the ads shown as it is the ad network who buys the ads and sells the space.  They have no control over the content of the ads or where they take you.

I work in a marketing department and we've had ads placed on sites where we didn't want them, but it was part of the package of the particular ad network we were working with.  So if it makes you feel better, the people who are advertising the 1 lb/day weight loss (and others) probably don't want the ads on this site because it preaches against that kind of loss.  But it was part of the category they wanted to advertise in.

I'm personally happy that the ads are there because it keeps this great site free.  And all of the great, free advice will help people stay away from weight loss scams.

TOTALLY agree with you about the ads. I use firefox and have the adblock plugin. It is, in a word, AWESOME. I NEVER see ads on Web sites. Ever. I feel in control instead of being bombarded by companies trying to sell me stuff I don't need, want, or in the case of the examples you cite, stuff that doesn't work.