programme lost 50 percent more weight, snacked less and bought more fruits and vegetables when they were given detailed meal plans and grocery lists, US researchers reported this week.

The researchers, who described their findings at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity on Monday, also found that women who were told to exercise in 10-minute bouts four times a day exercised more and lost more weight than women told to exercise for 40 minutes once a day.

During the course of the study, said Rena Wing, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the studies' authors, the women who were given detailed meal instructions and shopping lists at their weekly weight-loss meetings lost about 26 pounds in 26 weeks -- over eight pounds more than the women who went to similar meetings but were not given the same detailed eating instructions.

A year after the study ended, both groups had regained weight, but the women who had received the meal plans were still about 15 pounds below the point at which they had started, while the others were 7 pounds below.

"It's a dramatic difference in weight control,'' Wing told the Associated Press. "It also led to more regular eating'' after the study ended, as women had more fruits and vegetables in their homes, were more likely to eat breakfast and lunch regularly and tended to avoid snacks more, Wing said.

The findings suggest that structured weight-loss regimens are generally likely to be more effective than flexible plans, she added.

Patrick O'Neil, a psychologist and director of the weight management centre at the Medical University of South Carolina, said the study "certainly does show pretty convincingly that the more structure that can be provided to the weight manager -- I don't like the word `dieter' -- the better.'' All of the women in Wing's studies participated in a 26-week series of weekly meetings that were aimed at changing their dieting and exercise behaviour.

They were told to eat 1,000 to 1,500 calories per day and to exercise more.

"There is no question that exercise is probably the single best predictor of long-term weight loss,'' Wing said in conclusion.

*** Interested in sampling Linda McCartney's vegetarian burgers? Don't bother right now -- they'll do you a fat lot of good.

On Wednesday, stocks of McCartney's "beefless burgers'' were recalled by British manufacturer Ross Young after a TV investigation in Britain revealed that they contained twice as much fat as listed on the packages.

"I must stress that there are absolutely no food safety implications or risks to consumers,'' managing director John Anderson said. "I have today decided to withdraw the affected stock from sale in order to maintain impeccable Linda McCartney brand standards.'' The wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney is quoted on packages of her products as saying: "Of course, I have insisted on the nature of the ingredients we use, which ensures they are both delicious and wholesome.'' For a programme that was shown yesterday, ITV's "The Big Story'' analysed batches of the beefless burgers and discovered fat contents of between 20 percent and nearly 23 percent. The nutritional contents on the packages showed a fat content of 11.2 percent.

*** People with celiac disease -- those who cannot eat wheat and rye products because it harms their digestive systems -- can safely eat oats, according to a study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Celiac disease, also known as gluten enteropathy, affects up to one in 1,000 people, causing stunted growth, a distended abdomen and pale stools. Sufferers must adhere to a strict diet, but there has been a decades-long debate over whether oats and oat products should be included.

A group led by Dr. Esko Janatuinen of the Kuopio University Hospital in Finland tested oats and oat-free diets on 92 adults and found that both produced the same results.

Because the recommended diet is so strict, "any relief of dietary restrictions, such as those on oats, could make the diet more acceptable to patients,'' the researchers said.

*** A boycott of French goods in protest against the country's nuclear tests is likely to slash Japan's consumption of the fashionable Beaujolais Nouveau wine by more than half this year, air transport sources said Tuesday.

"In 1994, airlines carried around 1,100 tonnes (about one million bottles) of Beaujolais Nouveau to Japan. But this year, volume is likely to slump to 400 to 500 tonnes,'' a spokesman for Air France, the biggest carrier of the wine, told Reuters.

The popularity in Japan of the easy-drinking young wine normally consumed shortly after it is bottled in November has been slipping in recent years.

But the spokesman said the main reason for the expected decline this year was Japan's "boycott of a high-profile French product in protest at nuclear testing in the Pacific.'' *** A Swiss scientist who used a wasp no bigger than the head of a match to abort a famine and save millions of Africans was awarded the World Food Prize on Monday.

Hans R. Herren said he merely did "what needed to be done.'' In the process, at a cost of $20 million, an international team Herren brought together permanently stopped a pest that was ruining $2 billion a year of the starchy root cassava, perhaps Africa's most important food crop.

An unsuspecting traveller brought the cassava mealybug to Africa in the early 1970s. By the time entomologist Herren arrived in Nigeria in 1979, the only staff member of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the mealybug threatened the main foodstuff of 200 million people in a 30-nation area 1 1/2 times as large as the continental United States.

Locals called the epidemic the "candlestick disease'' for the forests of leafless dried sticks the mealybug left wherever it visited. It was claiming 700 square miles (1,820 sq.km.) of cassava every year.

Herren realised "candlestick disease'' resulted from a parasite, which flourished because cassava was imported from South America by Portuguese traders 400 years ago and the pest had no natural predators in Africa.

Team members discovered a tiny wasp called Epidinocarsis lopezi in South America and imported it. It lays eggs inside the mealybug, and the larvae eat the pest's guts before emerging as wasps to resume the cycle elsewhere.

Distributed over central Africa by airplane and on land, the wasp once established prospered and became a fixture of the environment.

"My biggest reward is that over 200 million Africans have a meal to look forward to,'' said Herren, a self-described "eco-freak.''