By: JV Staff
After suffering staggering financial losses due to false accusations pointed against her and her company, F-Factor diet creator Tanya Zuckerbrot has filed suit against Instagram influencer Emily Gellis for disseminating egregious lies about the product she sells.
Also an Instagram influencer and registered dietician with stellar credentials, Zuckerbrot has claimed that beginning in July of this year, Gellis waged a slander campaign against her company by spewing forth over 4500 false claims over a 75-day period about her F-Factor diet. According to court papers, Gellis asserted that Zuckerbrot’s diet causes physical maladies such as intestinal damage, heart attacks and death in certain cases. Gellis has even accused Zuckerbrot of “selling f***ing packaged poison” and “profiting off this cult-like mentality.”
According to a report in People Magazine, “Gellis, 34, has been resharing anonymous messages, allegedly from her Instagram followers, on her Instagram profile, claiming that the F-Factor diet and products like their fiber/protein powders and bars led to these health issues.”
In 2017, Zuckerbrot, 48, created protein powders and protein bars for inclusion in her F-Factor diet, which she has described as a “liberating and sustainable approach to weight loss and optimal health based on scientifically proven fiber-rich nutrition.”
For over two decades, Zuckerbrot has been a dietician in private practice, holding a master’s degree in nutrition and food studies from NYU. She is also an accredited member of the American Dietetic Association. Zuckerbrot asserts that Gellis has no background in nutrition and is no position to make any statements about diet programs.
In her lawsuit, Zuckerbrot is suing Gellis for defamation and wants more than $500k in damages to redress these substantial losses and prevent further misconduct,” her lawyers said in a press release. She also wants Gellis to cease and desist in slandering her and the product that she sells.
Things seem to be heating up on the bellicosity front as court papers indicate that the lawsuit says that Gellis erroneously claimed that Zuckerbrot has threatened to kill Gellis’ family and that she poisons people with the F-Factor products on a routine basis.
According to the report in People Magazine, “Gellis has also allegedly sent threatening messages to F-Factor dietitians, shared Zuckerbrot’s home address and drawn Zuckerbrot in a prisoner’s uniform.”
“The Defendant Gellis may think she is immune from accountability for false, defamatory and/or harassing statements she made to substantially harm Tanya Zuckerbrot and F-Factor because she made the statements on social media platforms,” Zuckerbrot’s lawyers said in the press release. “But she is wrong, and we believe a jury of her peers in New York City will ultimately agree that her conduct is unlawful and maliciously reprehensible.”
People reported that Zuckerbrot’s lawyers say that her husband Anthony Westreich contacted Facebook, the owners of Instagram, claiming that Gellis had violated the company’s community standards.
According to an anonymous source who is familiar with both parties in the lawsuit, Zuckerbrot has hired Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis to seek redress for her grievances and is allegedly planning to take aim at Facebook and Instagram for allowing their platforms to be used as verbal launching pads.
The source also claimed that much of the tension between Zuckerbrot and Gellis is predicated on the machinations of the “green-eyed monster” – better known in common parlance as sheer jealousy.
Said the source “Gellis was clearly jealous of Tanya and the lifetstyle she was leading. Tanya has a husband who is a billionaire, she has a highly successful business in which she was pulling in about $1 million per month. She has lovely kids and would fly to such exotic destinations as Dubai and elsewhere on private jets.”
Adding that Zuckerbrot had an affluent clientele, the source said that Zuckerbrot’s F-Factor diet cost each customer $25,000 per month.
Prior to the lawsuit being made public, Gellis posted to her Instagram story that she is “no longer going to comment on anything related to Tanya Zuckerbrot or F-Factor until whatever is going on is made public.”
After the lawsuit, People reported that Gellis said, “Tanya you are the devil, you are the devil, you are going to get what’s coming to you.”
