Cookie diet

Overview
"Cookie Diet" is the brand name of Dr. Sanford Siegal's diet cookies, shakes, soup, and nutritional supplements, which he created in 1975. The Cookie Diet products are made in Dr. Siegal's South Florida bakery and are available online and from physicians to whom he supplies them. Primary markets are North America, the United Kingdom and Mexico.

Recently, others have associated their products and services with the Cookie Diet and identified them with the same name. On July 13, 2007, however, a U.S. Federal Court in Miami issued a preliminary injunction against one such company and declared in its order that Sanford Siegal, D.O., M.D., is the "nationwide owner" of the Cookie Diet trademark.

1975-2002: Origins
Dr. Sanford Siegal began practicing medicine in Miami in 1957. Many of his patients were overweight. Dr. Siegal concluded that his patients’ obesity was the cause of many of their health problems. By 1960, he was limiting his practice exclusively to the treatment of overweight patients. For the next decade, Dr. Siegal developed various treatment protocols that were fairly effective at helping his patients lose weight. By the early 1970s, however, he had become increasingly frustrated by the negative impact of hunger on his program’s success rate. In 1974, after completing the manuscript for his first book, Dr. Siegal’s Natural Fiber Permanent Weight Loss Diet (Dell, 1975), he turned his attention to the problem of hunger and its major role in derailing reduced-calorie diets. For many years, Dr. Siegal had observed through his own experience that certain foods control hunger better than others and that some foods actually stimulate hunger. Drawing on his chemistry background and passion for cooking, he decided to try to create a mixture of natural food substances that could be made into various foods that provided maximal hunger suppression per calorie. In 1975, after a year of experimentation on his friends and family, Dr. Siegal came up with a particular amino acid protein formula and innovative manufacturing technique that he felt offered significant hunger control. He chose a cookie as the vehicle through which to deliver his amino acid blend because of its portability and durability. Dr. Siegal introduced his cookie to a small group of patients in 1975. He instructed them to eat exactly six cookies per day, not at fixed times but as needed to control hunger. For dinner, they were instructed to eat a reasonable dinner consisting of chicken or fish and some vegetables. The cookies provided about 540 calories and the dinner 300.

He observed that the cookie worked best when his patient’s blood sugar level was kept low. As a result, he forbade his patients having any carbohydrate during the day. Even minuscule amounts of carbohydrate seemed to work against hunger suppression. This necessarily evolved into his prohibiting the eating of any food whatsoever (except his cookie) during the day up until dinner, since virtually all foods contain at least some minimal amount of carbohydrate. In media interviews throughout his career, Dr. Siegal has explained that, provided that it is accompanied by close, expert medical supervision, he favors a very low calorie diet (VLCD) because the longer someone is on a diet the more likely they are to fail. He was aware that although VLCD diets had received criticism from some of his colleagues, there were no studies to substantiate any harm that resulted from that type of diet. This contention has been backed up by his own experience with over a half million patients. The regimen that Dr. Siegal prescribed was well-tolerated by his patients and their success rate increased substantially. Within eighteen months, the Cookie Diet was the only weight loss approach that Dr. Siegal was using in his practice. Initially the Cookie Diet was initially only available to Dr. Siegal’s own patients in South Florida. By the mid-1980’s, Dr. Siegal’s medical practice had grown to fourteen clinics in Florida and ten in South America and Mexico. By the late 1990’s, Dr. Siegal had supplied his cookies to more than 200 other physicians to use in their practices.

2002-2006: The Franchise Years
In 2002, Dr. Siegal was approached by Canadian doctor Sasson Moulavi, M.D., who wanted to use Dr. Siegal’s name and likeness, treatment methods, and proprietary foods in his own practice and to license other doctors to do the same. The two doctors entered into an agreement and Dr. Moulavi opened several weight loss centers under the name Siegal Weight Management (later changed to Siegal Smart for Life). In 2004, the agreement was replaced with a new one that made Dr. Moulavi’s company a franchisee of Dr. Siegal’s company and gave Dr. Moulavi the right to sub-franchise his centers. In the summer of 2006, there were more than two dozen Siegal Smart for Life centers were operating in several states including Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California. In August of that year, Dr. Moulavi terminated his relationship with Dr. Siegal and replaced the Siegal-brand cookies, shakes and soup with alternative products. In February 2007, Dr. Siegal filed a Federal lawsuit (07-20293-CIV-SEITZ/MCALILEY) against Dr. Moulavi, alleging several causes of action including trademark infringement, copyright infringement, cyberpiracy and various Lanham Act violations. Dr. Siegal asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction barring Dr. Moulavi from using certain copyrighted materials and trademarks belonging to Dr. Siegal, including the trademarks SIEGAL and COOKIE DIET. Dr. Moulavi countersued. On Friday, July 13, 2007, U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley ruled in favor of Dr. Siegal. The Court preliminarily enjoined Dr. Moulavi, et al., from using the COOKIE DIET trademark pending the final disposition of the trial which is scheduled to begin in June, 2008. (The same Court had recently permanently enjoined Moulavi from using the SIEGAL mark).

Books

 * Sanford Siegal, D.O.,M.D. (1975) Dr. Siegal's Natural Fiber Permanent Weight-Loss Diet, Dell Publishing, ISBN 0440177901
 * Sanford Siegal, D.O.,M.D. (1976) Dr. Siegal's Natural Fiber Cookbook, The Dial Press, ASIN: B000GPAAIG
 * Sanford Siegal, D.O.,M.D. (1985) Hunger Control Without Drugs, 308 pages, Macmillan Publishing Company Inc., ISBN 0026106604
 * Sanford Siegal, D.O.,M.D. (2000) Is Your Thyroid Making You Fat?, 304 pages, Warner Books Inc., ISBN 0446526592