Weight Watchers v. Jenny Craig: Don’t Rely on the Marketing  Two
commercial diet programs are fighting over ad claims. But ignore
the ads when you pick a program.   Weight Watchers and Jenny
Craig, two of the most popular commercial diet programs, are
wrestling over advertising claims. Weight Watchers yesterday
sued its rival, saying ads featuring a lab-coat-clad Valerie
Bertinelli falsely implied the two programs had been subject to
head-to-head competition—and that Jenny Craig came out on top.
The claim, filed in federal court, says the ads are actually
based on separate studies that compared each diet plan with a
control group and that the Weight Watchers study is a decade
old.  But as SmartMoney writer (and my former U.S. News
colleague) Angie Marek reported earlier this month, any
scientific studies supporting one commercial program over
another should be taken with a massive grain of low-sodium salt
substitute. In "The Skinny on Big, Fat Diet Programs," she
writes, "The science on most of these plans is