How We Review

Our objective is to have an on-going discussion on diets, nutrition, fitness, healthy recipes, supplements, and anything else related to your overall wellness. This is why we thoroughly investigate articles and reviews on a wide array of programs, products, and other topics pertaining to nutrition and losing weight.

We strive to bring you full and transparent information about every single product or service we review, and our reputation depends on us delivering on this.

In order to provide you with on-going information, we help fund the site through Amazon affiliate commissions. We have advertising disclosures all over our site, to make it clear which products we sell. We do this to be completely upfront with you.

You can learn more about this on our Advertising Disclosure page, as well as our About Us page.

Our Review Guidelines

The goal of our reviews is to educate you about:

• All sorts of programs and products intended to help you with weight loss, and overall health and wellness
• The features and benefits of each program or product we inspect, from success stories (or unsuccessful stories) to the ingredients and the cost, to how it’s manufactured and whether it’s safe, and of course what it claims VS what it delivers.
• Similar product competitors, so that you can determine which, if any, might be the best option for you.
• The science of how, if at all, the methods or ingredients actually produce results. This is important, and many sites leave this element out of their research. But, since almost all companies tell you that their product works best with diet & exercise, we strive to find out if the product actually works, or if any results you get are solely because of your diet & exercise.
• If the product we’re reviewing has any lawsuits or any sort of dubious history
• What Discuss Diets readers have to say about each product, as well as testimonials from others around the world

Our Review Criteria

These are the criteria we use to evaluate each product:

• Is there a complete and transparent ingredient list, along with accurate nutrition facts?
• The actual quantity and source of every ingredient, in order to determine whether the labeling is genuine. For example, companies often list ingredients like whey protein, or soy, to mask the actual ingredient MSG
• How and where is the product manufactured?
• Is there any scientific support for the claims made by the company?
• Are there any potential side effects associated with the product?
• Are there any experts—dietitians, physicians, nutritionists, etc.—supporting the product?
• Do they have any success stories we can confirm with photos and written testimonials?
• What’s the cost/benefit value? Is it expensive, but at least delivers on its claims? Is it cheap to try, but isn’t worth your time? How does the cost stack up to its competitors? These are important factors we want readers to have before making a decision.
• Do they offer a sample of the product before customers commit to paying a bunch of money?
• Is there a money-back guarantee, in case the product doesn’t live up to customer expectations? A money-back guarantee is a good indicator of the company’s confidence that their product will deliver results.

Our Methods & Sources

We reference databases of indexed medical literature–PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and MedLine–that archive findings from the National Institutes of Health as well as the National Library of Medicine.  We also pool information from websites like FDA.org, WebMD, Nutrition.gov, Google Scholar, and Wikipedia.

For customer testimonials, we reference the product company’s official site, but we also extensively comb through Amazon.com reviews so that we can confirm which reviews are Verified Purchases.