Smart move on Weight Watcher’s part. Fund a weight loss study (free; login required) where your only competition is “standard treatment in primary care” and you get your name plastered all over the place with headlines like “Dieters lose more on Weight Watchers than visits to doctor.
Well, like that’s a high bar huh?
Since the study is available at the link above, feel free if you want to read all the details, but I just have two questions:
1) If you paid for a year’s membership to Weight Watchers and lost 10-15 pounds, would you be happy with that?
2) What do you make of the fact that more than one-third of the participants on the Weight Watchers arm of the study withdrew from the study before it completed?
Sigh.
Update, 9/9: A more thoughtful response on this study from Dr. Arya Sharma.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Hi Beth - I was a ‘taxi-on-the-way’ from being on BBC Breakfast news this morning (the main UK TV channel) when the BBC (rightly) decided to pull this item realising it is a blatant plug for Weight Watchers.
It is also old news! This was announced at the Stockholm obesity conference in July last year and I blogged on it at the time (http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2010/07/weight-watchers-works-according-to-a-study-funded-by-weight-watchers/) - your comments are bang on & similar to mine!
So - not only do you fund the study (vs no benchmark, as you say) to pick your desired headline - you then reissue the press release each year and hope that people forgot. USA Today fell for it! The BBC nearly did…
Well spotted you! Zoe x
Thanks Zoe! As a legitimate study (regardless of funding source), I can understand why the Lancet published it, so perhaps USA Today can get a bit of a pass for the timing, but they can’t really get a pass for just printing the press release ;).
I saw the story on ABC News, and had the same reaction as you. The popular press/ media exercises little editorial judgement when it comes to stories about diet and weight. They know the public is interested in the topic, and so they just run whatever they get. It’s lazy. It’s also a disservice to a public that sorely needs sound information.