From Joe: We earlier reported the buzz about a Consumer Reports study of diet plans. Now Tara Parker-Pope advises us to be skeptical and tough-minded about successes claimed by commercial weight-loss programs:
The magazine said Jenny Craig had “the edge over the other big names” on the basis of a two-year study published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In that study, 92 percent of 442 overweight and obese women stuck with the program for two years…They lost an average of about 16 pounds…But the magazine failed to report that the women in the study didn’t pay a dime to sign up for the Jenny Craig program. Unlike real Jenny Craig customers, they received $6,600 worth of membership fees and food during the two-year study…Today, someone who wanted to spend two years on the program would pay about $400 in registration fees and about $100 a week for packaged meals…