Should We Trust Fitness Magazines?
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Tons of fitness magazines vie for your attention, but can you trust them? A closer look reveals the pressure of selling ads even if they go to questionable products and advice that sometimes is rather bizarre.
One Half Is Ads…
The other day I was standing in line to check out my groceries, and I glanced over to a magazine stand. I always check out new fitness issues that come out and I do have my favorites. But today something made me question the value of information inside of them. Automatically I remembered a few articles that I’ve read in the top fitness magazines which seemed a bit bizarre and definitely not healthy.
As I was looking through the issue something caught my eye like it hasn’t before – load of advertisements. I mean we normally see ads in every newspaper and magazine, that’s normal, but it was the amount of advertisements that I saw which made me question – do people really need to waste their money on this?
I purchased the magazine in question for the sake of my research, because I didn’t want to hold up the line. When I got home, the first thing I did was look at the amount of pages in the issue, there were 94. Then I proceeded to count the pages that have advertising on them and that number was 40. And half of that number were advertisements for possibly dangerous diet pills and supplements, some of which I wonder about they can still be legal. What bums me out the most about all this is the legit fitness professionals who place their names and faces on these products.
But that’s a whole different story. After I analyzed the magazine I realized that a little under 50% of it is advertisement, the other half of the magazine is filled with information that you can get for free on the internet, no ground breaking info. So why do we pay such high prices for fitness magazines? Just fitness food for thought.
…The Other Perhaps Dubious Advice
This takes me to another point. A few months ago I was reading an article in one of the most trusted and popular fitness magazines and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the recommendation to eat gummy bears for muscle recovery. Gummy bears? For muscle recovery? I scratched my head. I understand the necessity of carbohydrates for muscle recovery, but gummy bears? Really?
I might not be a bodybuilder, but I still have common sense and this just doesn’t make any sense to me. Someone pleases enlighten me about gummy bears for muscle recovery.
After all this investigating I decided when I need information on fitness or advertising, I’ll just google it. Why would I want to pay 5 dollars for something I can get for free? Next time you are tempted by glossy pages and a hot chick on the cover, you too may want to just look through them and put the magazine back on the shelf. Or did you ever find something in a fitness magazine that was truly unique?
Picture courtesy of James LeVeque.
2 Comments
I’m shaking my head at the thought of anyone thinking gummy bears are a good idea for muscle recovery. Of course, I also think they are a pretty lame excuse for candy, but that’a another topic for a different time. There has been a lot of turmoil in the magazine industry over the past few years, with the number of titles sold shrinking and advertising teams willing to sell their pages to anyone who will pay the price. I’ve always felt that advertising and editorial should remain separate, but it seems like standards are dropping with lame advice. Was there a big ad for gummy bears opposite the article?
Hi Shira,
Thankfully there wasn’t a gummy bear add, but there was tons of ads for those supposedly healthy protein bars that are packed with sugar alcohol and other toxic things. The saddest thing for me was that there are fitness professionals that are very respected in the field selling their names to diet pills, while knowing this stuff doesn’t work. They can make money in other places, but they are selling them selves out for diet pills.