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Read more: Jenny Craig beats Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast as best diet program - NYPOST.com
Jenny Craig is top heavy hitter
Diet showdown reveals which plan is best, pound for pound
That's the verdict from a surprising new study from Consumer Reports, which rated Jenny Craig's prepackaged, dieting-for-dummies plan as the No. 1 way to drop those pesky pounds.
The Jenny Craig diet -- which mostly consists of nuking prepared, calorie-proportioned meals in the microwave -- far surpassed the wildly popular Weight Watchers points program, which came in a distant third.
Jenny Craig earned top marks for nutrition and for the high number of pounds that users consistently lost, as well as for the number of dieters who stuck with the program for the long haul.
In the field of seven well-known dieting programs, Jenny Craig flattened the competition, scoring an impressive 85 out of 100 points from Consumer Reports -- an impressive 22 points higher than the rating for the next best diet system.
"The concept behind it is portion control," said Nancy Metcalf, senior program editor of Consumer Reports, of Jenny Craig. "These are nutritionally balanced meals. You can't mess it up."
Still, "it might not be for everyone," she said. "We tasted this food, and it's not that delicious.
"That might be a problem for some people."
The Slim-Fast plan -- in which dieters have three snacks, two shakes and one healthy home-cooked meal a day -- came in second with 63 points.
"Slim-Fast does pretty well with weight loss. Its strength is in its simplicity," Metcalf said.
But "the Achilles heel of Slim-Fast is that after six months, people really start to drop out. Maybe they just can't look at another shake."
Weight Watchers, which requires users to assign a point value to foods and allows them to eat only a certain amount of points a day, came in at No. 3.
The plan's overall score was 57.
"Weight Watchers is the most flexible, but the weight-loss results are never spectacular," Metcalf said.
But late last year, the company revised its point-system plan, which allows users to eat whatever they want in moderation, winning it a cult following. And the company has just finished some major clinical trials regarding its new points system, but the results haven't been released.
"It'll be interesting to see how they turn out," Metcalf said.
The Zone diet, a Hollywood favorite, scored 54 points, dragged down to fourth place in part because of its low score for long-term weight loss.
In that category, it earned only a "fair" from Consumer Reports, the lowest of all the diet programs.
"Eating the Zone diet, it's actually kind of complicated," Metcalf said. "You have to be precise at every meal."
Author Dr. Dean Ornish's diet, from the best-selling "Eat More, Weigh Less" book, tied for last with the Atkins diet. Both of those weight-loss systems earned 48 points each.
"[The Ornish diet] is kind of the mirror image of Atkins," Metcalf said. Atkins relies on no carbs and high fiber -- perfect for veggie-hating carnivores -- while the Ornish diet skews toward crunchy vegans.
But because each is so extreme nutritionally, they tested poorly in the Consumer Reports study, which rates nutritional value by their adherence to the US Dietary Guidelines.
To come up with the winner, Consumer Reports analyzed the nutritional data from each plan and looked at various clinical weight-loss studies about them.
After examining those two factors, they crafted a formula to grade each system.
The formula gave a little more significance to the amount of pounds lost by dieters, although nutritional info was also a huge factor in determining the final score.
One factor that propelled Jenny Craig to the top of the diet pile was a 2010 clinical study that found users weighed about 8 percent less after two years. That same study, of 332 dieters -- which only focused on Jenny Craig -- found that 92 percent of participants were still on the program after two years.
"The best diet is the one that you can stay on," Metcalf said, "because if you can't stick with it, then you won't lose weight, nor will you be able to keep off any weight you do manage to lose."
Read more: Jenny Craig beats Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast as best diet program - NYPOST.com
