Celebrating ‘family meals’

▶ Larsen TM, Dalskov SM, van Baak M, et al. Diets with high or low protein content and glycaemic index for weight-loss maintenance. N Engl J Med 2010;363:2102–13.

▶ Papadaki A, Linardakis M, Larsen TM, et al. The effect of protein and glycaemic index on children's body composition: the DiOGenes randomised study. Pediatrics 2010;126:e1143–52.

Dietary interventions in obesity generally emphasise dietary restriction. The optimal composition of a diet in the prevention and management of obesity is controversial. Larsen and colleagues involved families that included at least one parent who was overweight or obese and at least one healthy child in the Diogenes project. The study used families as the unit of randomisation, as adherence to diet was thought to be more likely if the whole family had the same diet.

In the initial ‘weight loss phase’, 938 adults (mean age, 41 years; body-mass index 34 kg/m²), received 800 kcal diet per day and 773 participants who lost at least 8% of their initial body weight in the 8-week run-in period were randomly assigned to one of the five maintenance diets to prevent weight regain over a 26-week period: a low-protein and low-glycaemic-index diet, a low-protein and high-glycaemic-index diet, a high-protein and low-glycaemic-index diet, a high-protein and high-glycaemic-index diet, or a control diet. There was no restriction on energy intake in the ‘maintenance phase’. The mean initial weight loss with the low-calorie …