There was no significant difference between the diets in how much weight people lost, Helen Truby of Royal Children's Hospital in Australia and her British colleagues reported in Biomed Central's Nutrition Journal.
"Health professionals and those working in community and public health should be reassured of the nutritional adequacy of the diets tested," the researchers wrote.
Truby and colleagues asked 293 people on diets across Britain to record how much food they ate during a two-month period and compared the results with a group who ate normally.
They found that all four diets led to weight loss but that only people on the Weight Watchers plan boosted the amount of fruit and vegetables they ate even when the plans advised them to do so.
New research by Royal Children's Hospital in Australia claims fad diets—like Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, Atkins and the "Eat Yourself Slim" Diet — do little to increase people’s intake of fruits and vegetables. Wow, what a shocker!
The study's in Biomed Central's Nutrition Journal. Reuters reports:
This shouldn’t be taken as a glowing endorsement for Weight Watchers. Dr. Fuhrman considers Weight Watchers an obsolete approach to weight-loss. Not to mention, portion-restricting diets have dismal failure rates or only post modest results.
Now, what this research does show is too many people are still veggie-phobic. Some REALLY freak out over vegetables!