I've been on this earth some time, and seen several diet fads:


1. Reduce sugar. I think that there was good dietary advice to cut down
on "sweets". Of course, most desserts get most of their calories from
fat, but since "sweets" usually have less food value than other foods, it
makes sense to cut down on "sweets" first. That's a real easy way to
figure out how to reduce calories. Unfortunately, people got real weird
about this. You would hear people refer to the "good and healthy"
breakfast they had. Three eggs, three pieces of bacon, greasy potatoes,
toast with butter and coffee with heavy cream. The healthy part? They
replaced the one teaspoon of sugar in their coffee with a substitute.
Savings? 18 calories!

2. Reduce fat. Fine, but when you look at how people did it, they always
added even more sugar to compensate. And then the food people made zero
fat foods by reducing the portion size and reducing fat to 1/2 gram, which
they could advertise as zero. Of course, people would eat 5-6 portions at
time, since the portion size was ridiculous.

3. Reduce carbs. I don't understand this one too well, but certainly
people who consume 7 portions of carb in a meal aren't doing well. But
now you hear of people consuming enormous portions of meat and fat and
calling it a "good diet".


So, what do you folks think the next fad will be, or will we just start
the cycle over again? Low moisture? I had an office partner who always
went pee right before getting weighed at the doctor. A pint of pee weighs
a pound. That's a pound weight loss in less than a minute!

--
Dan Abel
Sonoma State University
AIS