your post made me smile- acarbose came out when i was a student and was marketed as a 'starch blocker'- and they had these commercials on late nite TV (maybe on youtube?), where they would show heaping portions of spaghetti and meat sauce, and mashed potatoes and gravy- the narrator would say you could eat these foods and not gain weight if taken with acarbose- and i would always shout in indignation at the screen "what about all the meat and gravy, like those don't add calories?!"- so i always laughed at that ad, but i never even thought of what you point out- even if you could eat the mountain of mash and lose weight, you may lose friends as a side effect! :)