12 Healthy Habits of Christmas – Day 6 – Fad Diets

12 Healthy Habits of Christmas – Day 6 – Fad Diets

For day 6 of our 12 healthy habits for Christmas, I am going to write about a topic that isn’t technically a health “habit”, but I get enough emails about this, that I feel justified in including it in our roundup: ignore (or at least research before you try) Fad Diets.

There are all kinds of fad diets that have been out there from the grapefruit diet to the watermelon diet, to the sauerkraut diet. Most of these diets are at best just a waste of time, and can sometimes even have fairly potent negative consequences.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of “diets” out there that are worth trying out, since they have their basis in sound nutritional science. Some of the diets that may pique your interest include the South Beach diet, some low glycemic index diets, even the low carb Atkin’s type diets have had some very interesting articles written about their benefits1.

To conclude this post, even though our knowledge of the world, including nutritional science, keeps changing, there are some basics which will not. Furthermore, although the newest hottest diet may sound great, if its roots are not based in some concrete research, it will just be the latest fad that nobody could believe they actually tried.

1Yancy, W.S., Jr, Westman, E.C., McDuffie, J.R., Grambow, S.C., Jeffreys, A.S., Bolton, J., Chalecki, A., Oddone, E.Z. (2010) A randomized trial of a low-carbohydrate diet vs orlistat plus a low-fat diet for weight loss. Arch Intern Medicine 170(2):136-45.

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