Excerpt from Tom Venuto’s book, Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle
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Fat Loss Lie #2: “You can believe everything you read in magazines”
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In general, you tend to trust what you see printed in the magazines .
Why? Because the major news media and most magazines have major credibility. Most people automatically assume – consciously or unconsciously – that if it’s in print or on the news, then it can’t be a lie.
However, the fitness and bodybuilding media have some dirty little secrets…
Just as much of the news we hear is “planted” (by PR agencies) or “slanted” (by publisher ideologies), much of the fitness and nutrition information we read in our favorite magazines is also heavily biased.
Publishers realize that the vast majority of readers are impressionable, eager for knowledge and will believe almost anything if it’s printed in a nationally-circulated magazine.
As a result they created…
“The magazine / supplement company business model.”
Today, most fitness magazine publishers not only depend on supplement company advertising revenue to stay in business, the magazines actually OWN the supplement companies and use their publications as the primary channel for selling their products.
It didn’t take long before the entire bodybuilding and fitness magazine industry realized that more money could be made selling supplements than selling advertising or subscriptions.
It’s not that all the magazines are intentionally out to scam you, or that you can’t find good information in some of them. There’s quality information out there if you know who and what to look for. Heck, even I write for some of the major national and international fitness magazines.
The problem is that most people don’t know which writers or magazines they can trust and they can’t sort out where the editorial ends and the advertising begins. Sometimes, that is by design…
Editorials are more believable than ads (which is why they try to make supplement ads look like articles these days – they’re called “advertorials”).
Even the articles themselves are promotional.
Did you ever notice how many magazine articles are about the latest, greatest “breakthroughs” in supplements? These aren’t really articles at all; they’re advertisements in disguise… with an 800 number for easy ordering at the end…(how convenient.)
Even if a magazine has no vested interest in a particular supplement line, keep this in mind: A full page ad in a high circulation national body-building magazine can cost tens of thousands of dollars, so the publishers don’t want to write editorials that will upset, offend, or contradict the big dollar advertisers.
It’s in the magazine’s best interest to promote supplements like crazy and stay in bed with the supplement companies, regardless of how efficacious the products are, because the more supplements are sold, the more the supplement companies will advertise. The more they advertise, the more the supplements sell, and on and on the cycle goes.
It may seem blatantly obvious to you that magazines are “pushing” supplements, or you may have simply suspected it.
However, you would be stunned at how many people – especially beginners – believe every word they read in the “muscle mags” and buy hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of useless “muscle-building” or “fat burning” pills, powders, and drinks as a result.
I call it like I see it and just report the scientific facts to you. Fortunately, the trust I’ve built with my readers keeps my rankings up without having to depend on supplement company advertising dollars.