Free Food, Some Oversight, and a Plan: Popular Commercial Diet Works in Randomized Trial

Wrong. It failed. Read on.

Obese women willing to enroll in a clinical trial, who receive prepackaged food items, counseling, and activity plans free of charge, and who are paid to come to follow-up appointments, can achieve substantial weight loss in one year and keep most of it off at year two, a new randomized clinical trial suggests [1]. Those with dyslipidemia at baseline also appear to be able to knock down their cholesterol and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels.

Maybe they lost initially under ideal circumstances that cost huge resources.

But they started to gain it back.

At 24 months, 92% of the original study participants were reached for follow-up. Weight loss was greatest in the in-person counseling group, at 7.4 kg (down from 10.1 kg at 12 months), followed by 6.2 kg in the telephone counseling group (8.5 kg at 12 months), and 2.0 kg in the usual-care group (2.4 kg at 12 months).

Oh, and the study was done by someone who at one time worked for the commercial program.

Rock had previously served on the advisory board for...during 2003 and 2004.

Would this staged event work in real life?

...in an accompanying editorial [2], Dr Rena R Wing (Brown University, Providence, RI) writes that the time has come to compare commercial diets head to head. She also explores just why this particular diet worked, highlighting the intensive nature of both the in-person and telephone-based interventions and the willingness of the subjects to participate in the trial, and she points out that all aspects of the programs, including much of the food, were provided free of charge and subjects received reimbursement for attending follow-up visits. "An important question is whether an obese individual enrolling in this or a similar structured commercial weight-loss program will achieve similar results," Wing asks. "Most likely, the answer is no."

Indeed.