Diet Dogma Misguided, Study Reveals

Diets fail because they are made impossible.

Advising weight loss is absolutely the right way to go.

It must be done right.

These researchers have s**t for brains and are part of the problem since they are part of the system.

Advising obese and overweight patients to lose weight does more harm than good, according to a recent study in Nutrition Journal, an online scientific publication. The article ranks as one of the publication's most "highly accessed" and has generated a storm of controversy among health professionals.

Linda Bacon, an associate nutritionist at University of California, Davis, and nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco, and Lucy Aphramor, a specialist dietitian with England's National Health Service and an honorary research fellow at Coventry University, conducted the survey of almost 200 scientific studies appearing in provisional form in the Journal's January 24th issue, just released in final version.

Rather than improving patient well-being, their review showed, weight-loss advice more often leads to weight gain, feelings of failure, and diminished health status. The authors advise health professionals to set aside weight as a marker and strive instead to help people improve health behaviors.

"The weight-focused approach does not, in the long run, produce thinner, healthier bodies," said Bacon. As a consequence, "many medical and policy measures are misdirected, costly and damaging. It is clear from our review of the data that body weight is a poor target for public health interventions."

Right premise (diet dogma is misguided); wrong conclusion.