Weight Loss Industry
| The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with USA and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
There is a substantial market for products which promise to make weight loss easier, quicker, cheaper, more reliable, or less painful. These include books, DVDs, CDs, cremes, lotions, pills, rings and earrings, body wraps, body belts and other materials, not to mention fitness centers, personal coaches, weight loss groups, and food products and supplements. US residents in 1992 spent an estimated $30 billion a year on all types of diet programs and products, including diet foods and drinks.
Between $33 billion and $55 billion is spent annually on weight loss products and services, including medical procedures and pharmaceuticals, with weight loss centers garnering between 6 percent and 12 percent of total annual expenditure. About 70 percent of Americans' dieting attempts are of a self-help nature. Although often short-lived, these diet fads are a positive trend for this sector as Americans ultimately turn to professionals to help them meet their weight loss goals.
In Western Europe, sales of weight-loss products, excluding prescription medications, topped £900 million ($1.4 billion) in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Weight Loss, Intentional Weight Loss
Famous quotes containing the words weight, loss and/or industry:
“Ah, mon cher for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)