‘Crash’ diets have better results than more common weight-loss regimes and should be prescribed on the NHS, according to an Oxford University obesity expert.
‘Phenomenal’ results from a major new trial show those put on a rigorous 800-calorie-a-day programme lost three times more weight than those assigned normal diets, said Professor Susan Jebb.
For years, crash diets have been criticised for being unscientific and counter-productive. The NHS advises they are ‘hard to follow’, adding: ‘Most people put the weight back on.’
But Prof Jebb said fears of ‘yo-yo’ dieting were misplaced, as studies showed the more weight people shed to start with, the longer it took to put back on.
‘Crash’ diets have better results than more common weight-loss regimes and should be prescribed on the NHS, according to an Oxford University obesity expert. ‘Phenomenal’ results from a major new trial show those put on a rigorous 800-calorie-a-day programme lost three times more weight than those assigned normal diets, said Professor Susan Jebb. (Picture posed by model)
Her study of 278 obese patients in Oxfordshire found that those placed on a meal-replacement diet – where breakfast, lunch and dinner are swapped for nutritionally complete soups, shakes and meal bars – were 10kg (more than 1½st) lighter after one year.
By comparison, those given standard advice – to cut down on calories and eat healthily – were only 3kg lighter 12 months later.
Prof Jebb, a dietitian and former Government obesity tsar, said: ‘By referring people to this programme, they lose 7kg more than they would have lost under what we usually offer them.
‘It’s phenomenal – extraordinary – and like nothing we’ve seen in primary care before.’
The top-line results of the study, nicknamed Droplet, have just been presented at the 25th European Congress on Obesity in Vienna.
Prof Jebb’s (above) study of 278 obese patients in Oxfordshire found that those placed on a meal-replacement diet – where breakfast, lunch and dinner are swapped for nutritionally complete soups, shakes and meal bars – were 10kg (more than 1½st) lighter after one year
Droplet used a commercial product called Cambridge Weight Plan, where dieters ditch all normal food for shakes, soups and meal bars formulated to make the dieter feel full.
After two or three months, they slowly ‘wean’ themselves on to real foods. The approach has been road-tested on four volunteers in BBC documentary The Big Crash Diet Experiment, which airs on Wednesday.
On average, each lost 17kg after nine weeks. That is a little more than the 14kg average Prof Jebb saw in her study at that point: the typical pattern is to put weight back on in the following nine months.
Among the volunteers was Catholic priest Paul Lomas, 64, who shed 22.4kg – more than 3½st – and saw his type 2 diabetes reversed.
Prof Jebb said such results mirrored those of a similar study by Professor Roy Taylor, of Newcastle University, who looked at whether very low-calorie diets could reverse type 2 diabetes.
He found it could – with 45 per cent of participants diabetes-free after a year. Prof Jebb said: ‘If this was a drug, we’d have people screaming from the rooftops for it to be available on the NHS.’
Health economists have yet to run the rule over these diets to see if they are cost-effective enough for the NHS – and at about £700 for a six-month plan, they are not cheap.
But she said: ‘I am absolutely confident this is clinically effective. If this proves also to be cost-effective, then it should be provided on the NHS.’
Less radical diet programmes WeightWatchers and Slimming World, where people typically end the year 5kg lighter, had been found to be ‘screamingly cost-effective’ for the NHS, she noted, because they saved on long-term costs spent on diabetes drugs, knee replacements and hospital stays for heart disease.
Longer-term studies show that weight creeps back to pre-diet levels after ‘four or five years’ but she said even if this happened, ‘all is definitely not lost, because we know that even short periods of weight loss bring surprisingly big health benefits’.
This was because the health risks of obesity are ‘directly related both to how heavy you are, and how long you carry that extra weight around’.
One in four adults is now obese, with diabetes estimated to cost the NHS £10 billion a year. Prof Jebb warned: ‘If we don’t tackle this, we will just see the burden on the NHS going up.’