Brstjjy

A fad diet is a diet that is popular for a time, similar to fads in fashion.^[1] Fad diets usually promise rapid weight loss^[2] or other health advantages, such as longer life. They are often promoted as requiring little effort and producing a "quick fix".^[3] In many cases, the diet is characterized by highly restrictive or unusual food choices, which can cause serious health problems.^[2][4]

Fad diets are a big business. Celebrity endorsements are frequently used to promote fad diets, which may generate significant revenue for the creators of the diet through the sale of associated products.^[2][5]

History

A competitive market for "healthy diets" arose in the 19th-century developed world, as migration and industrialization and commodification of food supplies began eroding adherence to traditional ethnocultural diets, and the health consequences of pleasure-based diets were becoming apparent.^[6]:9 As Matt Fitzgerald describes it: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

This modern cult of healthy eating is made up of innumerable sub-cults that are constantly vying for superiority. ...Like consumer products in commercial markets, each of these diets has a brand name and is advertised as being better than competing brands. The recruiting programs of the healthy-diet cults consist almost entirely of efforts to convince prospective followers that their diet is the One True Way to eat for maximum physical health.... The specific cult whose "science"-backed schtick a person finds most convincing usually depends on his or her identity biases.^[6]:9–13

Sylvester Graham, of Graham cracker fame, is often given credit for creating the first fad diet in the 1830s.^[1] Graham promoted a religiously motivated vegetarian diet that emphasized an anti-industrial, anti-medical "simpler" or "natural" lifestyle, with meat and other rich, calorie-dense foods being declared sinful.^[1]

Many fad diets were promoted during the 19th century.^[1] One of the most effective self-promoters was Bernarr Macfadden, who relentlessly promoted the idea that nearly all diseases were caused by toxins in the blood from poor diet and lack of exercise, and that nearly all diseases could be cured through fasting, eating the correct foods, and physical exercise.^[1]

The modern fad diet originated in the 1930s.^[7] This was the decade when the first liquid diet drinks were marketed, when the grapefruit diet, first became popular,^[7] and when the Zen macrobiotic diet was developed, although it did not become a fad for another generation.^[1]

Description

Most fad diets fall into five general groups:^[1]

• food-specific diets, which encourage eating large amounts of a single food, such as the cabbage soup diet,^[1][7]
  


• low-carb diets, such as the Atkins diet, which first became popular in the 1970s,^[1]
  


• high-fiber, low-calorie diets, which often prescribe double the normal amount of dietary fiber,^[1]
  


• liquid diets, such as SlimFast meal replacement drinks,^[1][7] and


• fasting.^[1][7]
  

Fad diets are generally restrictive, and are characterized by promises of fast weight loss^[2][4] or great physical health,^[6]:9 and which are not grounded in sound science.^[5][2][6]:12

A typical weight-loss fad diet requires 600 to 800 calories per day,^[7] compared to 2,000 or more for a healthy adult. The restrictive approach, regardless of whether the diet prescribes eating large amounts of high-fiber vegetables, no grains, or no solid foods, tend to be nutritionally unsound, and can cause serious health problems if followed for more than a few days.^[3][7] Fad diet tend to under-emphasize physical activity, and tend not to provide followers with the skills and knowledge they need for long-term maintenance of their desired weight, even if that weight is achieved.^[3]

Some fad diets, such as diets purporting to be alternative cancer treatments, promise health benefits other than weight loss.^[7]

Marketing

Most fad diets promote their plans as being derived from religion or science.^[1] Fad diets may be based completely on pseudoscience (e.g., "fat-burning" foods or notions of vitalism); Most fad diets are marketed or described with exaggerated claims, not sustainable in sound science, about the benefits of eating a certain way or the harms of eating other ways.^{[2][6]:33,74, 80, 155}

Such diets are often endorsed by celebrities or celebrity doctors who style themselves as "gurus" and profit from sales of branded products, books, and public speaking.^{[5][6]:11–12[8]} One sign of commercial fad diets is a requirement to purchase associated products and pay to attend seminars in order to gain the benefits of the diet.^[9]

The audience for these diets is people who want to lose weight quickly^[10] or who want to be healthy and find that belonging to a group of people defined by a strict way of eating helps them to avoid the many bad food choices available in the developed world.^[6]:11 Each year, these people spend tens of billions of dollars on fad diet products, such as liquid meal replacements, in the US alone.^[7]

Results

Fad diets tend to result in losing small amounts of weight, usually mostly water, in the first few days or weeks.^[7] Afterwards, the weight is almost invariably regained.^[3][7] According to Boston University School of Medicine, 98% of people who lose weight regain it within 5 years.^[11] Many diets fail to produce lasting weight loss because dieters revert to old habits after the end of the diet, many diets are not sustainable, and deprivation of certain foods leads to binge eating.^[3][11]

Teenagers following fad diets are at risk of permanently stunted growth.^[7]

Mainstream diet advice

Healthy eating is simple, according to Marion Nestle, who expresses the mainstream view of nutrition:^[6]:10

The basic principles of good diets are so simple that I can summarize them in just ten words: eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. For additional clarification, a five-word modifier helps: go easy on junk foods. Follow these precepts and you will go a long way toward preventing the major diseases of our overfed society—coronary heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis, and a host of others.... These precepts constitute the bottom line of what seem to be the far more complicated dietary recommendations of many health organizations and national and international governments—the forty-one “key recommendations” of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, for example. ... Although you may feel as though advice about nutrition is constantly changing, the basic ideas behind my four precepts have not changed in half a century. And they leave plenty of room for enjoying the pleasures of food.^[12]:22

David L. Katz, who reviewed the most prevalent popular diets in 2014, noted:

The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches.
Efforts to improve public health through diet are forestalled not for want of knowledge about the optimal feeding of Homo sapiens but for distractions associated with exaggerated claims, and our failure to convert what we reliably know into what we routinely do.^[13]

List of fad diets

References

External links

• 
  Media related to Fad diets at Wikimedia Commons