I think it's a good thing that there are bloggers out there watching very closely and holding people accountable. Everyone in the news should be able to hold up to that kind of scrutiny. I'm for as much transparency in the news gathering process as possible. --Anderson Cooper For my May 12 post Shame on You, Consumer Reports... , I was surprised at how difficult it was to track down Consumer Reports' primary research source for its diet rankings in the June 2011 issue ("Pick Your Ideal Diet"). I cite two reasons: 1. Consumer Reports omitted the name of the author and title of their primary source, the very source used to "edge" Jenny Craig into First Place. (Cheryl Rock, et al; "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women." (1803-1810) 2. The CR source appeared in the October 27, 2011, issue of JAMA, which published 2 articles and 2 op

I think comparisons are odious. --John Madden Researching and writing yesterday's post has worn me out, but on May 9, after receiving my latest issue of Consumer Reports , I knew I had to respond. The process was confusing and long because while Consumer Reports cited a study in a specific issue of JAMA, the writer failed to include the title of the article, so I had to dig through the table of contents of JAMA to suss out which article CR had used as its source. In my mind, the most likely article was "Treatment Options for Obesity: Do Commercial Weight Loss Programs Have a Role?" Logical, right? Not. In fact, the "logical" article was simply an editorial in response to CR's real source: "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women: A Randomized Control Trial." If you have already read Consumer Reports Diet Program Ratings ("

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. --Attributed to Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911) What gave [Jenny Craig] the edge over the big names we assessed--stalwarts such as Atkins, Ornish, and Weight Watchers--was a 332-person [actually, it was a 442-person study], two-year study of the program published in the Oct. 27, 2010, Journal of the American Medical Association. [Title of article, which was omitted from CR's ratings or its accompanying article: "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women," by Cheryl L. Rock, PhD, RD, et al, and published online on Oct. 9, 2010.] ...Jenny Craig's prepared food was decent, though not great, as we noted in "Diet Taste-off" in our February 2011 issue. --"Pick your ideal diet," Consumer Reports , June 2011, page 14, after selecting Jenny Craig as the number 1 diet (Score

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. --George Bernard Shaw Okay, okay, so the above quote is a bit snarky, but I couldn't find a quote that directly addresses this particular issue, probably because one of the so-called iron-clad diet commandments is widely-accepted: Thou shalt not eat at least 3 hours before bedtime. This is absolutely ludicrous; not only are such "rules" ridiculous, but they are often the very dictums that send us to the fridge after midnight. These days, I don't go to bed hungry because I eat when I get hungry. From my past history, I know that my hungriest times are between 7:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. Sound familiar? A tendency toward mindless nighttime eating seems be one of the main nemeses of overweight people. So why fight it? Why not learn to work with your own biology and use it to your advantage?