Cash Bribes Work for Weight Loss, Says Research

The NHS Weight loss Reward schemes may have stirred up lots of controversy; however scientists are putting their weight behind them, saying that cash prizes are effective incentives to help the obese lose weight.

cash-bribes-work-for-weight-loss

So people can be induced to slim down if they have sufficient cash incentives, but the sad part is that when that incentive is taken away, they are likely t o fall back upon their unhealthy habits once again. Not just that, but they tend to get even fatter than before after the incentive is taken away!

Impact of programs such as where people are being paid as much as three thousand pounds if they lose as much as ten stone (which is about 140 pounds), which is a program pioneered by the Eastern and Coastal Kent NHS trust, is being examined. Such incentivizing of weight loss has been criticized as a waste of public funds.

Such schemes have also been decried on the grounds that this could promote unhealthy eating patterns such as extreme dieting and so on.

However American researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have found that if people are paid an incentive to lose weight, they may lose more weight than if they were not paid.