NHS diet patients lose ‘half a stone each’

OVERWEIGHT Britons given diet coaching by the NHS are losing an average of more than half a stone each, the head of the health service has said.

Simon Stevens said the programme, to be offered in every part of the country, had already exceeded expectations.

The first results indicate that overweight patients who completed most of the sessions lost an average of 8lbs each. Forecasts predicted average weight loss of around 5lbs.

Under the programme, overweight patients are sent for around a dozen classes on diet, cooking and keeping fit, costing the state around £435 per head, over a period of up to nine months.

Officials say the measures will pay for themselves by preventing thou- sands of cases of diabetes. So far more than 150,000 patients have been referred, evenly split between men and women.

Mr Stevens will tell Diabetes UK’S annual conference today that efforts to tackle obesity were showing promise.

He will say: “Obesity is the new smoking and the scale of our response needs to match the scale of the crisis.”

The NHS chief executive will say orders to hospitals to remove supersize snacks are already showing success, with more than a million fewer chocolate bars sold on NHS premises last year.

Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said: “For a programme that is still emerging from its pilot stages these early results, though not brilliant, are indeed better than hoped for.”