Bariatric surgery is better than dieting

Bariatric surgery is better than dieting, says top doctor – so ran the headlines on the front page of The Sunday Times yesterday.

For those that missed it, the feature went something like this:

‘Forget the yo-yo diet and plump for gastric bypass surgery instead’ says one of Britain’s experts on weight-loss. ‘The only answer to Britain’s obesity epidemic is to offer surgery to anyone suffering from severe weight problems’ he says.

Nick Finer, professor of obesity medicine at University College London, has found that the average long-term weight loss achieved by most obese adults who diet is 2-3%, so small as to be almost irrelevant.

‘What these figures show is that dieting is, for most people, completely pointless’, he says.

‘Humans evolved in unpredictable environments where food was scarce and our bodies are programmed to maintain our body weight at all costs.’

‘When people become fat their hormone and nervous systems adapt to the new weight and treat it as normal – so it is very hard for anyone to fight that by cutting their food intake, especially in a world where food is so plentiful. It means we have to look for new answers.’

Finer will set out his findings at this week’s British Science Festival in Birmingham, where he will suggest that the best way for the NHS to tackle the health impact of the obesity epidemic would be to set up a national network of fat clinics to carry out a mass programme of gastric bypass surgery.

He suggests that the clinics should initialy target the 1 million Britons suffering from severe obesity who already put a strain on the NHS because of related health problems.

It will be interesting to see more details about his proposals and the media coverage he gets from this!