Best Diets of 2012 Chosen by U.S. News & World Report

According to a new report from U.S. News & World Report the best weight loss diet for 2012 is the Weight Watchers diet. The next best is the "Biggest Loser" diet followed up by the Jenny Craig diet plan. According to the people who put the report together, data shows that Weight Watchers dieters have the most success with both short term weight loss and long term weight loss/weight maintenance. They also say that Weight Watchers is one of the easier diets to follow, making it more likely that a client will stick to the plan over time.

The Jenny Craig program, another top commercial diet plan, can be effective but, according to researchers, relies too much on pre-packaged meals and is significantly more expensive than other options. It's interesting to note that, not very long ago, research from the Journal of the American Medical Association as well as ratings from Consumer Reports magazine showed Jenny Craig to be the best weight loss diet on the market.

The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet was chosen has the best overall diet for 2012, for the 2nd time in two years. The Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet and the Mayo Clinic diet took the 2nd and 3rd spots in that category. The rankings were created by a panel of 22 diet, nutrition, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and "food psychology" experts who voted on things like how easy a diet is to follow, nutritional completeness, safety, and a diet's ability to produce short-term and long-term weight loss results.

We say: US News & World Report has already shown their love for both Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig in the past. Could it be that they're being paid off by these billion-dollar diet companies? We'd give it 50/50 odds that that could be the case!

Learn some mo': Best Diets of 2012 -- New Rankings