A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about one of the previous winners of Sweden's "The Biggest Loser" and his on-going struggle with gaining weight despite living an active life with exercise and healthy eating. After he discussed the issue with experts, the conclusion was that his problems were due to a damaged metabolic rate caused by the TV show and its practices.

That article and New York Post's rather shocking piece " 'Biggest Loser' drugged us so we'd lose weight" has drastically changed my opinion about the show to the worse, a show that seems to include elements of drug use, isolation, starvation and humiliation.

"Bob Harper was my trainer," says Joelle Gwynn, of 2008's "Couples" season. "He goes away and his assistant comes in. He's got this brown paper bag that's bundled up. He says, 'Take this drug, it'll really help you.' It was yellow and black. I was like, 'What the f- -k is this?' "

Gwynn says she took the pill, once.

"I felt jittery and hyper," she says. "I went and told the sports medicine guy. The next day, Dr. H [Dr. Rob Huizenga] gave us some lame explanation of why they got added to our regimen and that it was up to us to take them…People chastise Bill Cosby for allegedly offering meds to women, but it's acceptable to do to fat people to make them lose weight. I feel like we got raped, too."

[…]

"When I was going through the applicant process, they told me, 'You’re not fat enough,' " Mendonca [Suzanne Mendonca, Season 2] says. She was 5-foot-6 and says she weighed 229 pounds, morbidly obese by NIH standards.

"They said, 'You need to gain 40 pounds. Keep eating.' " Mendonca entered the show at 255 pounds.