Cookie grumbles: trademark dispute involving snack-based diet program lands in court.

EAT cookies and lose weight? It seems too good to be true.

And that's what Neil Friedman thought when he visited his sister in Florida and saw her dramatic weight loss after going on the cookie diet. So, Friedman tried it out for himself and lost 55 pounds in three months on the medically supervised weight loss program.

"I finally realized she was telling me the truth about the diet," said Friedman, who now manages seven cookie-diet weight loss centers in the L.A. area.

After he'd discovered the cookie diet on that trip to Florida, he introduced his friends Larry Brahim, Anthony Podell and Los Angeles Dr. Irving Posalski to the concept.

The three of them established Torrance-based Scientific Weight Loss LLC and invested $4 million in real estate to set up seven Los Angeles-area cookie diet weight loss center franchises.

But their investment in the cookie diet didn't tuna out to be as sweet as the name suggests, and last month Scientific Weight Loss filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Medical Care Holdings LLC, the Florida-based franchisor of the weight loss centers.

The suit alleges that U.S. Medical Care and its managing member, Dr. Sasson Moulavi of Florida, violated the franchise agreement by starting a similar diet program that gives unfair competition to Scientific Weight Loss' centers. Scientific Weight Loss wants to stop U.S. Medical Care Holdings from selling their competing cookies and diet programs in California.

The medically supervised cookie diet was started in 1975 by Florida Dr. Sanford Siegal. He licensed his name and trademark in 2002 to Moulavi who wanted to franchise centers nationwide.

The 800-calorie-per-day diet requires that individuals be monitored by a physician. Half of the 800 calories come from a single meal, a dinner of 6 ounces of chicken or fish and vegetables, and the other 400 calories come from eating six of the specially prepared cookies throughout the day. The cookies contain a nutritionally enhanced food mixture and appetite-suppressing enzymes

After Moulavi started franchising the cookie diet centers, a dispute with Siegal turned into a lawsuit. A judge ruled that Moulavi could no longer license the diet using Siegal's name.

Smart for Life

The California stores are now called Smart for Life. Scientific Weight Loss runs centers in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Sherman Oaks, Torrance, Rancho Mirage, Pasadena and Westlake Village.