HHS HealthBeat (March 25, 2009)

What Diets Work

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

There are low-protein diets, low-fat diets, and they all claim to work best.

So what approach works best?

They all do, according to a study that looked at what happened to dieters after a couple years.

The researchers studied four varieties:

• Low fat, average protein
• Low fat, high-protein
• High fat, average protein
• And high fat, high protein

Researcher Frank Sacks of the Harvard School of Public Health:

[Frank Sacks speaks] "What surprised me, actually, is all the diets did the same. They were effective for weight loss. And there was no advantage over the long run – or even over the short run – in one diet over the other."

All the dieters kept off about 9 pounds over two years.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011