The diet pill has drawn less criticism than most newly released drugs. Nutritional counselors feel the drug will be abused and that more focus should be placed on change in dietary and exercise habits. Others feel that the drug will fall into the hands of teenagers and college students that will abuse the pill for quick fixes or ignore its fat blocker purpose and not adjust the fat content to their diet.

Critics tend to focus on unpleasant side effects of loose stools and flatulence that happens to be the same listed on food packages that contain Olestra or other reduced sugar candies. This should only occur in those not using the diet pill correctly by having too much fat in their intestines that is not getting absorbed and exits the body with the rest of their wastes. The real unknown at this time is many vitamins are fat based and may be blocked, which can be helped by taking a multivitamin daily.

GlaxoSmithKline has not joined forces with any diets on the market today mainly since it appears that many are not low fat. The Atkins Diet is high fat while the South Beach Diet on its own back cover states it’s not low fat or low carb and therefore will not meet the criteria of alli. The company has a website that is steering dieters to do weight-loss profiles and build customized meal plans and provide feedback on their progress.

Dieters have been the route their website is trying to take overweight people and this has failed in history. They are skeptical of special meals or recipes and need a diet that makes it easy to eat at restaurants. In a very busy society, they don’t want to count calories or carbs, or measure food portions.

It will be a shame if GlaxoSmithKline’s product fails since it appears public abuse of the product may be the only cause of it being pulled from the market one day other than dieters not using it along with the proper diet plan. The FDA recently set guidelines with one being that diet pills are ranked based on their ability to keep weight off for one year or more.

The key will be finding a non-fad diet that allows eating normal foods found in grocery stores and restaurants. The diet chosen to take with this new diet pill will also have to take the brunt of the responsibility in keeping the weight off and not allow a dieter to go back to eating wrong foods or in excess. The diet must change bad eating habits and get overweight people away from the addiction to wrong foods at the beginning of the diet. Alli will help do this by acting as a sort of diet police putting in discipline if one cheats on the correct diet that matches the pill’s criteria and might be what’s needed to put in some dieting ethics.

Other controversy, as exists for all drugs on the market today, is whether there is a contribution to colon cancer. A Brazilian study indicated that similar drugs as Xenical and Orlistat in the higher dosage obtained only by prescription could form cancer. The same occurred in the past when the Sweet-n-Low low calorie sweetener was inappropriately accused of causing cancer when later research article found it safe. Compared to mind altering drugs to lose fat, drugs based on physical blockers and not mental ones may be one of the waves of the future that won’t go away anytime soon.