When Oprah Attacks: Daytime Host Sues Hollywood Nutrition Supplement Maker

By Thomas Francis in Broward, Business

Fri., Aug. 21 2009 @ 8:20AM

Oprah's getting angry!

In the same week that the New York Times named FWM Laboratories of Hollywood among nutrition supplement firms that ran misleading internet ads, daytime talk show host Oprah Winfrey named the company as lead defendant in a suit she filed against some 500 websites. The New York Post reports that Winfrey is joined in the suit by the physician her program helped make famous, Dr. Mehmet Oz. They say the advertisements exploit their celebrity to attract customers for dubious products.

Here at Juice, we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop since last month, when FWM was featured prominently in a Business Week article about the business boom for companies that make supplements claiming the effects of resveratrol, the exciting but still largely unproven drug that's been linked to a range of health improvements.

David Sinclair, the Harvard researcher who made the breakthrough on resveratrol, is also named in advertisements for FWM's Resveratrol Ultra, along with Barbara Walters, who did a news segment about the chemical resveratrol, not the product Resveratrol Ultra.