Fad diets

Possibly the most serious nutrition problem in the United States is excessive food consumption, and many people have experimented with fad diets in the hope of losing excess weight. One of the most popular of the fad diets has been the high-protein, high-fat (low-carbohydrate) diet. The premise for such diets is tantalizing because the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle (see Chapter 20) is the primary site of fat metabolism, and because glucose is usually needed to replenish intermediates in the TCA cycle, if carbohydrates are restricted in the diet, dietary fat should merely be converted to ketone bodies and excreted. This so-called diet appears to work at first because a low-carbohydrate diet results in an initial water (and weight) loss. This occurs because... 

Bulimic patients usually have a history of numerous strict or fad diets, punctuated by recurrent episodes of binging and persistent overconcern with body shape and weight (511, 512). MDD, as well as alcohol and drug abuse, often coexist in bulimia nervosa patients. 

American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Nutrition. 1977. Nutritional aspects of vegetarianism, health foods, and fad diets. Pediatrics 59, 460-464. 

Fad diet Any currently popular diet, usually not condoned by the medical community... 

Lay publications are inundated with fad diets designed to reduce body weight "quickly and easily" using a variety of caloric restrictions (68). Most individuals attempt to produce a negative energy balance and reduce body weight by decreasing food intake. 

The problem with all those diets, as is true with any diet, is that for virtually everyone, going on a diet means going off that diet. The only approach that really works is to change one s lifestyle enough to reduce the number of calories taken in as food and to increase the amount of calories burned through physical activity. In other words, you need to go on the No-Fad Diet, as Dr. Robert Eckel called it in his editorial accompanying the article that compared the four diets mentioned above. 

The kidneys must eliminate acid waste products when high-protein foods are broken down into their key components, called amino acids. Amino acids are essential to your body s health and are used to build healthy tissue. However, urea, an acidic by-product of protein metabolism, can build up in the body if you are eating too much protein for your kidneys to handle. While they are common, high-animal-protein diets are merely fad diets that result in overburdened kidneys and excess acid buildup. 

I 70. Following a fad diet meal of skim milk and yogurt, an adult female patient experiences abdominal distention, nausea, cramping, and pain followed by a watery diarrhea. This set of symptoms is observed each time the meal is consumed. A likely diagnosis is... 

Likewise, patients who do not have a well-balanced diet (such as the elderly, alcoholics, children, and those who go on fad diets) might also develop a vitamin deficiency. That would require the patient to take vitamin supplements to assure there are sufficient vitamins to support his or her metabolism. 

In the early 1930s, one fad diet, known as the Hay Diet, after its promoter Dr. William Howard Hay, stressed the incompatibility of proteins and carbohydrates, and that foods rich in each should be eaten in separate meals. 

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