I was sent a link to this article via my Contact Form, so I thought I’d give my thoughts on it: Diet Overkill: 25 Of the Most Ridiculous (and Ineffective) Popular Diets. There are 25 of them, so I’m not going to go through every one, but let’s take a look at what Ms. Hupp has to say about these diets.

Atkins: Although wildly popular, and quite effective for some people, the Atkins diet is just not sustainable for most dieters. This diet cuts out healthy foods like fruit, and adopts a limited list of foods that are often high in fat and otherwise unhealthy. Above all, this diet’s extreme restriction makes it incredibly difficult for most people to stick with it.

So the Atkins Diet is #1 on the list, though there’s no mention of whether they’re in any kind of order of least to most effective, so I’ll just assume they’re in no particular order. My first thought is that someone hasn’t done their homework. When I look at the Atkins site on their Maintenance Phase Food Pyramid, I see that fruits are the third level of the pyramid. Fruits are restricted initially, but that’s only for two weeks before gradually reintroducing them.

The commentary also makes the assumption that fat is bad with the phrase “foods that are often high in fat and otherwise unhealthy”. As we all know, fat is a necessary and essential nutrient, much more so than carbohydrates. And Jimmy Moore has plenty of chronicles of people that have managed to stay on the diet for the long-term, including himself. I don’t particularly like the use of the low-carb processed products that many people use, but if one uses real, whole foods, this diet is just fine.

The tapeworm diet: Almost too disgusting to detail, this diet involves swallowing cysts that you’ve dissected out of beef carcass. The plan is to allow the tapeworm to live in you for up to 10 weeks, and then take prescribed medication to kill it. It should go without saying that this is perhaps one of the most dangerous diets you can adopt. It not only requires you to ingest a parasite, it encourages unhealthy eating habits, which are almost guaranteed to make you gain every pound back once the worm is gone.

The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About: This diet gives the tapeworm a run for its money. Why? The weight loss “cure” consists of nothing more than ingesting the urine of pregnant women. Whether this is effective or not really doesn’t matter-there is absolutely, positively, a better way to lose weight than injecting yourself with pee.

Ok, now those diets are just dumb.

Hallelujah Diet; Slim Fast; The Hollywood Diet; The Martha’s Vineyard Diet; Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet; The Wu-Yi Tea Diet

All of these are based on purchasing a specific product, which the creator of the diet just happens to sell. How convenient! I think I don’t need to point out that any diet that requires you to purchase their specific product is probably going to lighten nothing other than your wallet.

The Fiengold diet: Dr. Benjamin Feingold created a diet free of chemicals believed to cause ADD and ADHD. This included not only food, but also certain drugs and hygiene items. Although this diet is not physically harmful, and can be helpful in some instances, it’s generally not wise to adopt this regimen. Critics warn against teaching children that food can dictate performance and behavior, and depriving them of appropriate professional help from doctors. [emphasis added]

Looking at the last line, I have to laugh. Why should we not teach children the truth, that foods can and do affect the way the body performs and can affect behavior? I can see not depriving kids access to doctors, but let’s face facts. Everything you eat affects how your body performs. Think about how you feel after that spaghetti lunch. Should we not teach kids that they feel so sluggish and run down because of what they ate? And it’s simply horrible to have kids eating foods without synthetic additives (i.e., real food), though it should be pointed out that not all processed foods are eliminated - only those containing certain additives. Ms. Hupp even points out that the diet causes no physical harm, so why is this one on here? I don’t know enough about the diet to say it’s effective, but it doesn’t sound like one of “the most ridiculous (and ineffective) popular diets”.

So I have to ask how many of these diets you all have actually heard of? I think the author started grabbing unheard of diets and put them in an article about “popular diets”. I can’t say The Tapeworm Diet has ever crossed my radar. Nor has the “Drink Pregnant Women’s Urine Diet.” I have a feeling 25 made a nice round number and some searching was done to find some of these. Overall, the whole article seems to be focusing on “intake,” otherwise known as calories, which ignores the very real hormonal effects of every single thing that goes into your mouth. I’m a bit concerned that a website for future nurses is either ignoring or ignorant of the real workings of the body. Basically, she says that nearly every diet is ridiculous and ineffective: low-carb, low-fat, macrobiotic…you name it, it’s on here. But what she doesn’t do is tell readers what they should eat.

When it comes down to it, a diet based on unprocessed foods is the one your body has evolved for. What are unprocessed foods? Meat and seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. There’s no such thing as an unprocessed grain (even “whole grains” are processed), though a bit of grain here and there isn’t going to kill you. Nor is pasteurized and homogenized dairy an unprocessed food. Raw milk is unprocessed and may fit into your diet if your body tolerates it without mucus production or digestive issues. While I prefer a diet higher in protein and fat, so long as you’re sticking to the above list of food, you’ll probably be just fine at most any macronutrient level. It’s amazing that once you go to eating real food, the body tells you what it wants as long as you’re not too stubborn to listen.


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Feeding Your Pets, Part Deux

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