As the New Year’s Eve is approaching, so is the race to lose that one last pound intensifying. For many, this means more attention to their diet and calorie intake, more physical exercise and clearly less indulging in the Christmas goodies. However, there are also many people, women in particular, for whom this means adding yet another diet pill to the recommended dose, or going for unknown, too-good-to-be-true products. It’s precisely these people who are now most at risk, the FDA warns.

Quite understandably, most of the diet pills people acquire and use, without a doctor’s recommendation, of course, reach them via the Internet. And it’s on the net that dangers unknown until now are lurking, with 30 slimming pills out of all available being extremely dangerous for our health. Most of them are available on websites like Amazon.com and eBay and seem to originate from Asia, being based, it is claimed, on ancient slimming remedies no one has ever heard of before.

“When consumers are buying these products online, we're telling them that if it sounds too good to be true, it is likely to be too good to be true,” says Michael Levy, a lawyer with the FDA. The warning signals should be clear for us all, he adds, because these specific pills advertise a solution to all problems, drastic weight loss almost overnight and, of course, no side-effects. It’s like they are God’s gift to our weight issues, Levy says, which should be all the more reason not to trust them.

“These tainted weight-loss products pose a great risk to public health because they contain undeclared ingredients and in some cases prescription drugs in amounts that greatly exceed their maximum recommended dosages,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's drug evaluation center, also says. The warning is double in strength in the case of patients with a history in high blood pressure or heart problems.

Just to be on the safe side, the FDA has also released the complete list of presumably dangerous slimming pills, and it includes as follows: Fatloss Slimming, 2 Day Diet, 3x Slimming Power, 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming, 3 Day Diet Japan Lingzhi, 24 Hours Diet, 7 Diet Day/Night Formula, 7 Day Herbal Slim, 8 Factor Diet, 999 Fitness Essence, Extrim Plus, GMP, Imelda Perfect Slim, Lida DaiDaihua, Miaozi Slim Capsules, Perfect Slim, Perfect Slim 5x, Phyto Shape, ProSlim Plus, Royal Slimming Formula, Slim 3 in 1, Slim Express 360, Slimtech, Somotrin, Superslim, TripleSlim, Zhen de Shou, Venom Hyperdrive 3.0.