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Mother-of-the-bride Sarah Ferguson lands fad diet endorsement deal ahead of royal wedding

Contra Costa Times - 10/9/2018

Oct. 09--Sarah Ferguson probably has so much to do this week, dealing with all the last-minute fuss that comes with preparing for a royal wedding that she and her ex-husband Prince Andrew reportedly hope will be as grand as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's.

Sarah and Andrew's second daughter, Princess Eugenie, is getting married Friday to Jack Brooksbank at Windsor Castle. There will be trumpet fanfare, Andrea Bocelli performing, grandmother Queen Elizabeth II throwing a reception and -- just like Meghan and Harry's wedding -- an open-carriage procession through the town of Windsor.

But amid all the pomp, trumpet fanfare and reported 500 guests, the mother-of-the-bride continues to network and seek business opportunities that could probably benefit from her connections to the British royal family, according to Page Six.

Ahead of Eugenie's wedding, details have leaked out that the Duchess of York, 58, has signed on to become a pitchwoman for an Italian entrepreneur who markets a high-priced diet program that guarantees people can lose pounds while eating fusilli pasta, pizza and specially formulated flavored drinks, "diuretic tonics," and chocolate cookies.

Ferguson should have some experience promoting a diet program. She was a longtime spokesperson for Weight Watchers, at one point earning more than $1 million per year, and has been open over the years about her struggles with her weight and the different programs and fad diets she has tried.

Now she's partnering with Gianluca Mech, a Rome-based businessman whose family has sold herbal products for 500 years but who may be best known in the United States for spending $200,000 to recreate, for one night in 2017, the Brooklyn discotheque where "Saturday Night Fever" was filmed, according to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.

If nothing else, touting Mech's "Italiano Diet" should be lucrative for Ferguson, who has become known for her efforts to find creative ways to fund a high-flying lifestyle that became less certain when she and Andrew divorced in 1996. Most problematically, "Fergie" was caught on tape in 2010 demanding $821,000 in return for business access to Andrew when he was Britain's special representative for international trade and investment, according to Vanity Fair.

The "Italiano Diet" seems marketed to people who enjoy a high-flying lifestyle or who are willing to go into debt to pretend they do. For example, for customers to stock up on a 45-day supply of food -- a "luxury kit" sold on Mech's website -- they need to spend more than $1,000 per person, the Daily Mail reported.

The kit comes with four different kinds of herbal-extract-based "tonics," two kinds of flavored drinks, soup, and fusilli pasta. But customers can buy items individually, such as the pasta meal for $14 and a box of chocolate dipped cookies for $20.

In becoming a spokesperson for the "Italiano Diet," Ferguson joins the company of one other celebrity who enjoys a high-flying lifestyle.

President Donald Trump's first wife Ivana Trump unveiled her endorsement deal with Mech during a lavish food-tasting and press event at the Plaza Hotel in New York in June, the New York Times reported.

In talking to reporters, Ivana Trump boasted that she herself has never struggled with her weight and neither have her three tall, slender children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump. That's because, Ivana Trump said, she always was a good parent who instilled discipline in her children -- not an "obese," lazy parent.

"If you are an obese parent, I guarantee your child will be obese," she told reporters at the event. "If you're a lazy person, it's much harder -- you have to be committed to a certain regime and stick to it."

Of course, Ivana Trump's ex-husband, the president of the United States, is a different matter when it comes to dietary discipline. He's known for loving his Kentucky Fried Chicken lunches and steak dinners, with extra helpings of ice cream.

Ivana Trump says she cares about America's obesity problem -- that's why she has teamed up with Mech.

It's not known if Sarah Ferguson likewise cares about obesity in America or Europe, but it's likely she'll be a more relatable spokesperson for the "Italiano Diet" than Ivana Trump. If nothing else, she can talk to others about her own struggles with emotional eating, stemming from when she was 12 years old and turned to her favorite comfort foods to deal with her parents' divorce.

Ferguson already has appeared at the University of Padua in Italy to promote Mech's products, Page Six reported.

But will Ferguson be able to claim that the "Italiano Diet" offers a more effective strategy for healthy, long-term weight loss than her other endeavors over the years?

According to the Daily Mail, Ferguson lost nearly 80 pounds through "a sensible" Weight Watchers program in the 1990s. But as with many adults, the pounds began to creep on as she entered middle-age.

In 2005, she hit a spa in Austria where she had to stretch out her 600 calories a day through "chewing" therapy: each mouthful must be chewed 40 times, the Daily Mail reported.

In the past few years, she has talked about being able to curb her sweet tooth drinking dessert-flavored teas and, through her website, Duchess Discoveries, she marketed a $130 blender for making healthy smoothies and soups.

Maybe Ferguson has been on the "Italiano Diet," hoping it will help her drop a few pounds before Eugenie's wedding so she can don a slim, chic mother-of-the-bride suit.

But alas, no matter what Ferguson does these days -- even throwing a big royal wedding with celebrity guests for her daughter -- she's no longer an official member of the "firm." Her ex-husband and daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, also are overshadowed by the major royals: William and Harry, the sons of the late Princess Diana, and their glamorous wives, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle.

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