Says it all

Flicking through my Twitter feed I came across this gem the other day (17^th Jan 2012)

‘Cutting 600 kcals from your RDA of 2,550 will lead to safe weight loss of up to 1kg per week, says the British Nutrition Foundation’.

Phew….breathe….

I have a few issues (if you stop the sentence here, it’s also true) with this.

First a bit of context. The Tweet was posted by Mens Health (UK), the largest health and fitness lifestyle magazine for men, both in print and online formats, so they have quite a lot of sway in the education and general mindset of the public. In addition it was based on information provided by the British Nutritional Foundation, who in their own words exist to ‘Provide(s) nutrition information for teachers, health professionals, scientists, and general public. Publications, conferences and educational resources.’ So again we have an organisation with huge influence on the nutritional knowledge of the public; which is why I have such a problem with this ‘information’. If it was merely mis/un-informed individuals repeating this nearly 100 years old (the original study all of this is based on was performed in 1917), out of date rubbish, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s not. The people involved are sources of supposed knowledge who inform the policy makers (in the case of the BNF) and essentially set public opinion (in the case of Mens Health (UK)).

Look at the message again. I wasn’t sure whether it was a typo and was supposed to have been 1lb instead of 1kg, as this is more in line with the common (but very wrong) recommendation of a 500Kcal per day deficit resulting in a 1lb weight loss per week (500Kcal x 7 = 3,500Kcal, the average amount of Calories liberated when a pound of fat is burned in a Bomb Calorimeter). In either case, it doesn’t matter it’s flat out in-accurate.

As I’ve shown before the Human body (or in fact any living organism on Earth) doesn’t burn/use/store (choose your own term, it’s irrelevant) Calories, so I’m not going to belabour the scientific process here. What I will show you is that even using their own erroneous equation doesn’t even work in practice.

This formula (3,500Kcal = lb Fat) is used by 99% of public and private health diet advisors, however the study I am citing was funded and based upon the protocols of Weight Watchers, easily the biggest ‘weight loss’ company in the world, so I feel quite comfortable using them as an example. It’s amazing how audaciously the results were presented, even though the study demonstrated that the formula and systems based upon it are out and out failures, the marketing machine managed to do quite a job on what should have been a catastrophic hit.

On average, Weight Watchers sets out to create a deficit of around about 1,000 Calories a day (based on the theory that, for example, a typical female requires 2,000 Calories per day, so is given an allowance of 18-20 points. One point is roughly 50 Calories, so this is an approximate 900-1,000 Calories a day diet). Using the previously mentioned equation, a 1,000 Calorie per day deficit, over one year, should be sufficient to lose 104 pounds in fat alone (not including other tissue loses that accompany fat loss). Now we have that in mind, let’s take a look at the study.

The study used 772 overweight and obese adults who were recruited by primary care practices in Australia, Germany, and the UK. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 12 months of standard care provided by their GP (essentially basic advice), or 12 months of free membership to a commercial program (Weight Watchers), and followed up for 12 months. The primary outcome was to determine weight change over 12 months. (1)

The results showed that out of the 377 participants who were assigned to the commercial programme, 61% (230) completed the 12-month assessment; and of the 395 who were assigned to standard care, 214 (54%) completed the 12-month assessment. In all analyses, participants in the commercial program group (WW) lost twice as much weight as did those in the standard care group. Mean weight change at 12 months was -5·06 kg (SE 0·31) for those in the commercial program versus -2·25 kg (0·21) for those receiving standard care in those who completed the 12-month assessment.
Mark one up for Weight Watchers. Twice as effective huh! Ummm…not so fast….

Look at the results again. This means that the Weight Watchers group lost an average of 11 pounds in one year – less than one pound a month. Hold on, surely there must be some mistake here. The participants were observed to have created a 1000 Kcal per day deficit, according to common knowledge all WW group participants should have lost somewhere close to 104 lbs…granted those initially weighing less than 7 stone to begin with may have run into a bit of trouble and ceased to have existed, but damn it, it’s an equation, we shouldn’t let reality skew our beliefs.

Yet, despite this, the result was chalked up and announced in the media as a huge success for Weight Watchers with a headline of ‘Weight Watchers Works’, and people lapped it up; after all their program achieved twice the results of a GP’s recommendation of ‘take the dog for a walk, and eat a bit less’. Even though the program delivered only 10% of the promised results, this was not seemingly important (although it was the basis for the study) and was not so stealthily brushed under the carpet, rather it was just merely ignored.

So there you are, you have an organisation who informs the government, teachers, the NHS and most other national bodies, who doesn’t understand the very basics of  their ‘own’ subject, alongside the most popular men’s fitness and health media source relaying their unsubstantiated and defective information and also the vast machine that is Weight Watchers, who’s whole empire is based upon a fallacy which even when they ensure that the chance of failure is minimal can’t even achieve 90% of their promised result.

As I often say, take great care with whom you give your mind, it and the body it influences is the most valuable thing you will ever possess; treat it with reverence you deserve.

Reference:

1. Jebb SA et al. Primary care referral to a commercial provider for weight loss treatment versus standard care: a randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2011 Oct 22;378(9801):1485-92. Epub 2011 Sep 7.