DR. SIEGAL’S SECRET RECIPE REVEALED

I discovered Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET(R) three years ago in a mall in Boca Raton, Florida, when my friend tried Dr. Siegal's cookies. She lost weight. I assumed there were illegal weight reducing compounds in the cookies, but when I tried to look up the ingredients I could not find them.

Dr. Sanford Siegal, known to generations as the Cookie Doctor(R) is the man behind the Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET(R) weight-loss system. He has author of books including Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet Book: How a Doctor and His Cookie Helped 500,000 People Lose Weight Fast.

Dr. Siegal introduced his diet in his South Florida medical practice in 1975 and it was an immediate success.
Eating to decrease appetite was not a new idea. Ayds (pronounced as "aids") was an appetite-suppressant candy which enjoyed strong sales in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was available in chocolate, chocolate mint, butterscotch or caramel flavors, and later a peanut butter flavor was introduced. The original packaging used the phrase "Ayds Reducing Plan vitamin and mineral Candy"; a later version used the phrase "appetite suppressant candy".

In 1944 the US Federal Trade Commission objected to the claim that the product could cause the user to “lose up to 10 pounds in 5 days, without dieting or exercising.” However, public awareness of the disease AIDS beginning around mid-1981 caused problems for the brand due to the phonetic similarity of names. By 1988 the product's name was changed to Diet Ayds (Aydslim in Britain), but eventually it was withdrawn from the market. It was about this time that Dr. Siegal came up with his cookie idea.

Eating six cookies a day he maintained enabled most of his patients to stick to the diet without significant hunger, and the fast weight loss they experienced kept them motivated until they reached their goal. At age 80, Dr. Siegal still personally mixes every batch of his proprietary protein formula in his private bakery near his Miami medical clinic. The cookie ingredients are, or at least have been a secret for 30 years. Siegal, however, still maintains his dark-of-night mixing routine and hints that there are subtleties in the recipe not apparent from the ingredient list.

Once a week Sanford Siegal makes a late-night visit to a bakery in Miami. There, he mixes cookie batter. When he's finished, 22 bakery workers pick up where he leaves off, stirring, baking and packaging 10 million cookies a year that Siegal, who keeps his exact recipe under wraps, sells for up to $1.50 each Siegal,

He maintains that there’s good reason for keeping his recipe a secret. He’s afraid of imitators. For most of the time, therefore, the osteopathic physician sold the cookies, without listing their ingredients.

Last year Siegal's son Matthew, 45, decided to help with his operation. Matthew launched a Web site called www.cookiedietonline. It now has 60,000 registered users and brings in slightly less than half of Siegal's cookie sales, which totaled $7.2 million for the year ended in May. Pretax profit, according to the Siegals: $2 million. Siegal senior owns 60% of the Web-based company. His son owns the rest. Matthew has overseen a massive public relations offensive for his dad, getting him on 15 TV and radio shows this year. When Madonna mentioned on a radio show in April that an unnamed cookie diet had depressed her husband's libido, instead of denying ownership- of the cookies the Siegals quickly claimed she was talking about Dr. Siegal's--and debunked her suggestion. So it doesn’t matter what they say about you—as long as your name is in the headlines.

Expanding the operation beyond his own medical practice, however, put Siegal within the realm of federal food guidelines. That took some of the mystery out of the magical diet food: He had to list ingredients.

The ingredients are
• wheat bran,
• egg white solids and
• to top it all of the real secret ingredient--microcrystalline cellulose.

This is a filler that isn't completely digestible except by termites. You might as well be eating sawdust or wood chips. It goes in whole in one end and goes out the other unchanged. But on the way hold on to a lot of water, which is the stomach acts to keep you full.


Please remember, as with all our articles we provide information, not medical advice.
For any treatment of your own medical condition you must visit your local doctor, with or without our article[s]. These articles are not to be taken as individual medical advice.

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