A plastic patch which is sewn onto the tongue and makes it very difficult to eat is the latest in extreme weight-loss methods.

The ‘miracle’ patch, which is secured to the tongue with six stitches, makes consuming solid food so painful that users are forced to resort to a liquid-only diet.

Launched in 2009 by Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Nikolas Chugay, the procedure can apparently help you lose up to 30lbs in one month – but not without uncomfortable side effects.

Dr Chugay’s website warns that patients may experience swelling of the tongue and difficulty with speech after getting the patch.

And according to Time, some patients have trouble sleeping and difficulty moving their tongue at all following the procedure, which has yet to be FDA-approved.

What’s more, the patch can only be worn for a maximum of one month, since after that time, the tongue’s tissue begins to grow back, and the patch can then become incorporated into the tongue.

But during that month, Dr Chugay provides an ‘easy to follow’ liquid diet of 800 calories a day, which ‘fulfills nutritional needs’ and ‘maximizes weight loss results’, according to his website.

The most extreme weight-loss method yet? The dieters having a patch sewn onto their tongues to make eating unbearably painful | Mail Online

Vegetarians live longer than meat-eaters, according to a study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, a Journal of the American Medical Association.

The authors tracked 73,308 members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for almost six years. The church is known for promoting a vegetarian diet, though not all of its followers adhere to that teaching. Researchers found out what type of diet participants ate, then followed up to find out how many of those participants had died and how.

Vegetarians in the study experienced 12% fewer deaths over the period. Dietary choices appeared to play a big role in protecting the participants from heart disease, from which vegetarians were 19% less likely to die than meat-eaters.

There also appeared to be fewer deaths in the vegetarian group from diabetes and kidney failure.

Caloric intake didn’t seem to matter. The different participant groups generally ate around the same amount of calories daily. Researchers found that the beneficial associations weren’t related to energy intake.

The advantage appeared stronger in men than women, whose diet didn’t seem to make as much of a difference. Eating plant foods didn’t seem to protect participants against cancer, which struck both the vegetarians and non-vegetarians in roughly equal measure.

Vegetarians Live Longer Than Meat-Eaters, Study Finds – WSJ.com

One of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains is planning to spy on the shopping habits of customers who want to slim and advise them on how to eat more healthily.

Tesco will use data from its loyalty card scheme to see who is loading up on high-calorie or fat-laden food such as doughnuts, chocolate and pizza.

Its 16 million Clubcard members could then be offered vouchers for healthier products or given recipes as part of the battle against the growing obesity epidemic. Tesco boss Philip Clarke said customers would need to ‘opt in’, rather than being bombarded by unwanted suggestions.

‘We won’t encourage healthier lifestyles by editing choices, but we can influence choice by making healthier options,’ he told The Grocer magazine. The supermarket’s technology experts have built an online tool – dubbed the ‘healthy little differences tracker’ – that will measure how customers’ habits change following the health drive.

The group is also expected to contribute data to government research into obesity.

However, only anonymous data will be passed to health research organisations, unless customers volunteer their details.

Supermarket keeping track of what customers buy to increase healthy eating | News.com.au