Smart for Life Cookie Diet

Cookie diet doctor Sanford Siegal’s Miami company has filed suit alleging that a former licensee in Boca Raton is violating its trademark.

The case revolves around who legally has the right to use the term “the cookie diet” to promote weight-loss routines that involve eating low-calorie cookies.

Siegal’s SM Licensing Corp. claims it has a common law trademark – established when a party starts using a term regularly, even though it’s not officially registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said Coral Gables attorney Ury Fischer, who represents the company.

However, Boca Raton-based U.S. Medical Care Holdings said it filed a trademark application for “the cookie diet” in 2005 and is the first company to affix the term to its product labels, COO Dr. David Klein said.

A Google search for “cookie diet” returned Klein’s company first under the sponsored links, with Siegal’s company right underneath.

The lawsuit is about more than just financial crumbs. Klein’s company does business under Smart for Life Weight Management Centers and has 43 franchised and company-owned locations.

Siegal said he has put more than 500,000 patients of his Miami practice on the cookie diet since 1975. He is launching the product in drug stores and doctors’ offices nationwide, beginning next month.

SM’s complaint against U.S. Medical Care and its owner, Dr. Sasson Moulavi, was filed Feb. 5 in U.S. District Court in Miami.

U.S. Medical Care had an agreement to establish franchises to sell the Siegal-branded diet cookie plan from September 2004 until August. Its right to use Siegal’s intellectual property expired in December.

The lawsuit claims that the former franchiser continued to use the term “the cookie diet” in its advertising, Web site domain names and product packaging in violation of SM Licensing’s common law trademark, established about 1990.

Fifteen years later, U.S. Medical Care filed a trademark application for “the cookie diet” in 2005 and is the first company to affix the term to its product labels, COO Klein said.

“We sent Dr. Siegal a cease and desist letter several weeks ago, saying that we believed his continued use of the term ‘the cookie diet’ was causing confusion in the marketplace to consumers,” he said. “We intend on fighting this in the courtroom.”

A common law trademark takes precedence when it’s established before a registered trademark, said James A. Gale, an intellectual property attorney in the Miami office of Feldman Gale. However, Siegal’s company has to prove “the cookie diet” has a secondary meaning that consumers associate with his company and not just any diet with cookies, Gale said. That’s why the complaint includes hundreds of pages of media and Web site references to Siegal’s cookie diet.

Siegal could have avoided this costly litigation if he had officially registered the trademark years ago by making a similar secondary meaning argument to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Gale added. A registered trademark is much easier to protect than a common law trademark.

The lawsuit also charges that U.S. Medical Care violated SM Licensing’s trademarks by using metatags – invisible source code imbedded in Web pages – to make its Web sites appear during searches for “Siegal” and “cookie diet.”

For instance, www.togetthin.com, listing the “Real Cookie Diet” by Smart for Life, shows up in a Google search for “Siegal” just below Dr. Siegal’s official Web site. However, Siegal isn’t mentioned anywhere in the text of the Smart for Life site.

It is illegal to use someone else’s trademark in a metatag, Fischer said. Gale confirmed that stance.

Another Smart for Life Web site violates SM Licensing’s copyright by posting before and after photos of patients who lost weight on Dr. Siegal’s diet, according to the plaintiff.

SM Licensing is seeking an immediate injunction against U.S. Medical Care using its trademarks, but no hearing for that motion has been set.

Ultimately, the plaintiff wants the defendant to lose weight in the wallet. Fischer said the case could lead to damages based on loss of business from confused customers or revenue collected by the defendant from patients that mistook it for Siegal’s cookies.

“When a franchising agreement ends, a franchisee has a heightened obligation to avoid confusion,” he said.

Thank you for visiting our Cookie Diet website today. We hope you join the program and start losing weight.

Another diet plan created in South Florida is set for a national launch: Dr. Sanford Siegal said his cookie diet will be in thousands of stores, beginning March 15.

The Miami physician has offered the cookies he created to more than 500,000 patients for 35 years. Now, his bakery is expanding to produce a nationwide supply of the filling treats.

Siegal advises the patients to eat six cookies a day, then a protein-rich dinner. The cookies suppress hunger while providing few calories. Patients often eat just 800 to 1,000 calories a day.

The cookies will come with a guide to the diet, which will tell patients to consult their physicians before starting it.

“We hope to allow other physicians to use our product and be successful with our patients, just as we have been,” Siegal said. “It will be a whole system. The cookie is effective, but must be used with a good medical program.”

For several years, Siegal had a franchising deal through Boca Raton-based U.S. Medical Care Holdings to sell the cookies at 20 clinics. He canceled that deal in August and those clinics now sell a different diet cookie under the name Smart Life Weight Management Centers.

Siegal said his relationship with the franchisee was not satisfactory, but declined to provide details. However, one of the reasons he’s selling at retail locations is to differentiate his cookie diet from competing cookie plans.

The launch will start in 2,000 to 3,000 chain drugstores and medical offices, such as chiropractors, and expand even further after eight weeks, said Matthew Siegal, the doctor’s son, who helps with marketing. The drugstore chains are obligated to do their own marketing for Siegal’s cookies, he said.

Also in March, the diet doctor’s sixth book, “Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet: How One Doctor and His Cookie Helped 500,000 People Lose Weight,” is to be published.
Keeping weight off is the hard part

A low-calorie diet, such as Siegal’s cookie diet, will make patients loose weight, but keeping the weight off is the hard part, said Susan Burke, a dietitian and chief nutritionist for Fort Lauderdale-based eDiets.com (NASDAQ: DIET). She supervises 21 online diet programs, not including a cookie diet.

Associated Sites

• Start Losing Excess Belly Fat « Power to the People
• Life And Health Insurance – Why It Matters « Era of Smart Things and Great Ideas
• Dr. Siegal’s New Springtime Piña Colada Diet Shake | Valley Girl
• Hollywood Cookie Diet -The Cookie Diet
• Healthy Heart! Low Calorie Diet | OneTouchWeather

Is the Latest Craze from Thyroid Doctor Sanford Siegal a Weight Loss Miracle?
The news promos show overweight women stuffing Oreos and giant Mrs. Fields cookies in their mouths, while the voice-over says, “Imagine losing 15 pounds a month while eating cookies!! Find out why people are going crazy for the Cookie Diet, tonight, on the six-o’clock news!”

That’s right…with February ratings sweeps upon us, the news media has jumped on the latest diet craze, and television news shows can’t produce stories fast enough touting Dr. Sanford Siegal’s “Cookie Diet.”

Florida diet doctor Sanford Siegal is author of the 2001 book “Is Your Thyroid Making Your Fat?” — which suggested going on an 800-calorie a day diet to test and see if you had a thyroid problem. After 21 days on a ultra low 800 calories a day, a low level of weight loss or failure to lose are both considered evidence of a likely thyroid slowdown, according to Siegal. You’ve read about Siegal in the past here at the About.com Thyroid site. Siegal, who has treated many thyroid patients at his weight loss clinic, shared his thoughts in 2001 on the Synthroid contoversy.

And back in 2002, Dr. Sanford Siegal and I were together featured in a Woman’s World magazine article, titled “The Thyroid Cure.” That magazine included a recipe for “thyroid-boosting diet cookies.” The Woman’s World recipe was loaded with sugar, eggs, oats, Chex cereal, and other high-fat, high starch, high-sugar ingredients, and according to Dr. Siegal, had nothing to do with his actual cookie recipe. (Read what Dr. Siegel has to say about the Woman’s World “thyroid-boosting diet cookie” recipe and whether these cookies would actually help you lose weight.)

Now, Siegal is back in the news again, this time with a repackaging of the famous “cookies” and a major marketing push to promote what is now being called the “Cookie Diet,” on which Siegal claims patients lose 15 pounds per month.

How Does the Cookie Diet Work?

Siegal’s plan is actually a very low-calorie diet, in which six of the special Siegal cookies are eaten when hungry during the day, along with eight glasses of liquid, and only one meal is eaten, dinner, consisting of 6 ounces of lean protein (chicken, turkey, fish or seafood only), plus one cup of vegetables.

The total calorie count of the diet comes out to approximately 800 calories per day, and total carbohydrate intake is about 70 grams per day, making Siegal’s program an extremely low-calorie, low carbohydrate diet.

What is not as frequently mentioned is that reportedly, as many as 60 percent of patients on the Cookie Diet are also prescribed appetite suppressant drugs, and another 25 percent are prescribed thyroid hormones.

The cookies, which Siegal claims have amino acids with appetite suppressant properties, are available in chocolate, raisin or coconut flavors, but even Siegal admits that they don’t taste very good. Don’t look for them on your local store shelves anytime soon, however. Siegal’s cookies are available only to patients at his weight loss clinics (five are in Florida, and one is in Montreal), as part of his estimated $400 a month weight loss treatment program.

Is the Diet Effective?

Some weight loss experts say that any diet that provides only 800 calories a day is bound to work, but at what price? Critics say that the diet provides far too few calories to maintain health and energy, and is seriously lacking in fruits and vegetables. (1 cup a day of vegetables doesn’t make a dent in the recommendation that we eat 5-9 servings a day of vegetables and fruit). Others have alleged that the Cookie Diet doesn’t provide sufficient vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Even Siegal admits that the Cookie Diet is not meant to be used for long periods of time. Many diet experts say that once people resume normal eating habits, they will regain the weight lost on drastic diets like this one.

What Can You Safely Do to Lose Weight?

In the meantime, put down that box of Oreos, and start thinking about what you CAN you do to safely lose weight! Check out the Cookie Diet.

First…get your thyroid tested. Experts now estimate that as many as 59 million Americans have a thyroid problem, with the vast majority undiagnosed. Since thyroid problems can cause weight gain — or make it impossible to lose weight — even with proper diet and exercise, this should be an important first step. Are you wondering if your thyroid might be contributing to your weight problem? Here are three steps to take to find out.

Associated Sites

• Miracles Of The Quran? Do You Guys Think This Is Pretty Cool?
• Uberi.com » Good Deals on Eight O'Clock Coffee at Amazon – Your daily source of the best deals!
• Hoodia Diet: Safe and Easy « smarter blog
• Eyelashes, diet craze top women’s expo in Eatontown – Asbury Park Press
• COMMERCIAL Rice Chex Cereals (1979) | Retro Commercials

Dr. Sasson Moulavi makes a weight-loss offer that sounds hard to refuse: the Cookie Diet, a pound-shedding program that he says has helped thousands of his patients drop an average of 15 pounds per month.

The key is a carefully crafted cookie recipe, which suppresses hunger, paired with very specific dinner menu, said Sasson of Smart For Life cookie Diet.
Related Content

“On this diet, you have one meal only: dinner,” Sasson said. “The dinner consists of 6 ounces of chicken, turkey, fish or seafood.”

Along with the lean meat choices, the diet allows one cup of vegetables with dinner. Red meats are discouraged because of their high fat content. The rest of the diet consists of exactly six hunger-suppressing cookies per day, which are baked in Sasson’s own bakery and available to patients in Sasson’s clinics throughout the country.

The cookies are not for breakfast or for lunch, but rather for whenever the dieter is hungry, though they must eat six a day. The six cookies, plus the one dinner, adds up to 800 calories. Dieters should also consume eight glasses of liquid a day, which includes coffee and tea, Sasson says.

Too Few Calories?

Critics say the diet’s requirement of 800 calories a day is too low, and that it lacks nutritional staples that give us the vitamins and minerals we need.

“It’s really just another fad diet that will hook people in with the gimmick of being able to eat cookies all day,” said Amy Campbell, a nutrition and diabetes educator at the Joslin Clinic in Boston. “While this sounds appealing, a closer look at the details reveals that this is not a nutritious eating plan at all.”

The 800 calories a day is below that which is recommended for safe and effective weight loss, and the diet is woefully lacking in fruits and vegetables, as well as calcium, vitamin D4 and fiber, she said.

Sasson says that there have been no problems with the diet in terms of patient safety, and that it is supplemented with vitamins.

Unlike diet pills designed to suppress your appetite, the cookies do not have drugs in them, Sasson said. Instead, the cookies contain amino-acids in the form of hunger-suppressing proteins: oats, rice, whole wheat flour, bran.

“We’ve worked with this mixture over the years to the point it works quite well as an appetite suppressant,” Sasson said. “And it enables someone to eat an 800-calories-a-day diet and not get hungry.”

Ela Prieto, a 39-year-old bank executive, lost 51 pounds, shrinking from a size 14 to a size 4. She was on the cookie diet for four and a half months, and then went off the diet and onto a maintenance program for the last two years, on which she eats about 1,200 calories a day, and exercises.

“The first five days, like on every diet, it’s not easy,” Prieto said. But instead of toting around a salad or a TV dinner, she just put her cookies in a Ziploc bag and kept them with her.

“And I’m not hungry,” she said. “The cookies do satisfy.”

They cookies are available in chocolate, raisin or coconut — but flavorful, they’re not.

“They’re not the world’s best cookies — but they weren’t intended to be,” Sasson said. The makers or Oreos and Mrs. Fields shouldn’t lose any sleep, he said.

The cookies themselves are low in fiber and two of the flavors are high in saturated fat, which can raise the risk of heart disease, Campbell said.

“Practically anyone who consumes only 800 calories per day will lose weight — the point is that, again, it’s not a healthful way to lose weight,” she said.

Not Enough Carbs?

Connie Diekman, the director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, was similarly unimpressed.

The six cookies daily supply a total of 60 grams of carbohydrates, which when added to the 10 from vegetables make the carbohydrate intake a total of 70 grams per day — much below the 100 to 125 grams per day minimum for health, Diekman said. Calorie-wise, each cookie is like a slice of bread, a nutritional mix of several different food types that is probably equivalent to half a serving of low fat dairy, and half a fruit serving.

“Again, this is a low-carb, low-calorie eating plan that will promote weight loss, but not necessarily body fat change, making it a less-than-healthy choice,” she said.

The cookie diet is not something patients would stay on permanently.

“It depends on how much weight you have to lose. Three out of four lose 15 pounds a month”. “No one will follow a diet for a lifetime, so we change the method to get them to burn up more calories.”

Although five pounds a month is often cited as a sustainable level of weight loss, for some it will be, the quicker the better.

“The only people we see who maintain their weight are those who get to the goal, set before them,” said the creator of the Cookie Diet.

Associated Sites

• Multiple vitamins with minerals brand | Yalloo.spb.ru med blog
• Your Thoughts Create Reality – Creative Visualization
• Diet pills ruined my life – Irish Independent
• Why Fruits And Vegetables Are Important! | Simple Recipe Ideas
• Once Upon a Coupon » The Fruits, Er, Vegetables Of Our Labor

Have you tried the cookie diet? Did it work? Have some questions before starting? Discuss it here.

Associated Sites

• Hollywood Cookie Diet -The Cookie Diet
• “urchinTracker is not defined” Google Analytics Error ~ Mattias Geniar
• Hollywood Celebrity Cookie Diet – FINALLY EXPOSED! | What Youve Heard
• Jonathan Rhys Meyers barred from boarding UA flight | Rehab Program for Alcohol
• Leonard labels visit to UA “very important” | "Tell them … tell the team to bear down"

COOKIE DIET

Associated Sites

• Hollywood Cookie Diet -The Cookie Diet
• Hollywood Celebrity Cookie Diet – FINALLY EXPOSED! | What Youve Heard
• HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY Cookie Diet UNCOVERED! | Easy Online Jobs Review
• Go Shopping for Cookie Diet | Go Shopping . Free Giveaways . Shopping Guide . Shopping Deals . Shopping Reviews
• REAL WRITING JOBS EXPOSED | BECOME AFFILIATE MARKETER