“Tying in” financial incentives into meal replacement therapies can help adolescents living with severe obesity to lose weight, latest evidence has demonstrated.
Recent research has found that teenagers who receive meal replacement therapy and financial incentives are likely to reduce their body mass index (BMI) more than those on meal replacement therapy alone.
One in five children and young people in the US are living with severe obesity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.
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Childhood obesity can increase your risk of developing obesity as an adult, as well as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Prior studies have found that teenagers lose more weight with meal replacement therapy than with traditional lifestyle modifications.
Senior author Dr Justin Ryder said: “There’s literature for adults that supports that tying in financial incentives to weight loss or physical activity programmes increases adherence, and so we wanted to see whether or not adding financial incentives to a behavioural / nutrition weight loss programme using meal replacement therapy would increase adherence and through adherence, increasing the efficacy of the treatment.”
Approximately 123 adolescents took part in the study, with half of the participants receiving meal replacement therapy plus financial incentives and the other half on meal replacement therapy alone.
Financial incentives were provided based on reduction in body weight from baseline and the meals in the replacement therapy added up to 1,200 calories per day.
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According to the results, the participants in the meal replacement therapy plus financial incentives group lost more weight than those in the meal replacement therapy only group.
Dr Ryder said: “Using a cost-effectiveness analysis, we looked at mean fat mass lost between the two treatments and found that despite providing the additional meal replacements for per pound lost, it was cost-effective to do so.”
The authors added: “While financial incentives plus meal replacement therapy appears to be a longer-term strategy than meal replacement therapy alone, treatment withdrawal will likely result in BMI increase.
“As such, research is needed to identify strategies that are scalable and feasible in the long term given the chronic nature of obesity.”
Read the study in full in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
