Adventures in Temporary Gastric Bypass
As long as human beings exist, we'll be searching for ways to be less fat without the bothersome obstacles of expending physical effort or enduring feelings of hunger, hence the continual stream of weird products that promise to help us in this quest, such as the breed of weight-loss pills that, instead of suppressing your appetite with a stimulant-type ingredient, simply swell up in your stomach to mimic fullness. If that sounds disgusting and/or potentially fatal, well, that's probably because it is, as Elle's April Long discovers.
The snappily-titled Fill Pill, for example, is made of glucomannan, a fiber capable of expanding up to fifty times its size. It's on the FDA's watch list of "questionable weight-loss products," which may explain why it triggered nausea and "intestinal distress" in our reporter, who nevertheless bravely went on to try a similar product: CM3 Alginate, endorsed by Oz Garcia. Although the dramatic warning on the label—"Taking this product without adequate fluid may cause it to swell and block your throat"—sounds promising, swallowing CM3 didn't deter Long from a bag of Doritos, which we're sure Oz will be most displeased to hear.
Long's last "satiety-based product" test is not with a pill but with a snack: The FullBar, made of puffed wheat, supposedly expands in your stomach with water. Its creator Dr. Michael Snyder touts it as like a temporary gastric bypass: "When the top of your stomach stretches out, it sends hormonal and neurological impulses to the hypothalamus saying it's time to stop eating." As dubiously pseudoscientific as that sounds, Long said the FullBar did keep her from snacking, but that may have been because it contains as many calories—150—as a bag of potato chips. We say: Come back StarCaps, all is forgiven!
