Almost 1:10 adolescents non-prescription weight loss products globally

One in ten adolescents globally have used ineffective and potentially harmful non prescribed weight loss products in their lifetime, with 2% using them in the previous week.

A review, of over 90 studies of 600,000+ participants, headed by Ms Natasha Hall fro0m Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that adolescent use of non prescription weight loss products is 5.5% overall, 2% in the past week; 4.4% in the past month, 6.2% in the past year and 8.9% in their lifetime.

The authors caution against the long term consequences of these ineffective treatments.