Fad diets aren't all bad. Fad diets can be classified as diets that come into vogue quickly and then become yesterday's news, often just as quickly, Every Diet states. By this standard, nearly any diet could be called a fad diet. But many fad diets center on a certain group or food group and have extremely restrictive "rules," insisting that you eat certain foods at certain times in exact amounts to gain any benefit. Fad diets have both positive and negative sides.
Oversimplication
Many fad diets, like the Cabbage Diet or the Three Day "Heart" diet, oversimplify the foods you can eat. By concentrating on just a few foods, or by supplying a list of foods you must eat at certain meals, some fad diets make it easy to follow them-- assuming you can tolerate the food. The downside of oversimplification is monotony and the inability to stay on the diet for any amount of time. This is actually a benefit, since these fad diets violate the first law of nutrition, according to the American Heart Association: good, balanced nutrition involves eating a variety of food types.
Potential Dangers
Many fad diets can potentially harm you. The hCG diet, a current fad diet, involves taking injections of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, produced by the placenta in early pregnancy. In large quantities, hCG, which has a similar chemical structure to thyroid stimulating hormone, can speed up the metabolism, increasing weight loss, according to the University of Maryland. However, it can also induce thyrotoxicosis, a life-threatening condition that leads to irregular heartbeat, sudden weight loss, sweating and irritability. Sudden death can occur from arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeat. The hCG diet also recommends eating no more than 500 to 800 calories per day. Even if the amount of hCG given is too low to increase metabolism, anyone can lose weight on a starvation diet, at least until the body starts conserving calories because it realizes it's starving.
Unsubstantiated Science
Many fad diets claim that the medical community is suppressing valuable information about nutrients or nutrition to further its own interests. Typical claims include the need to detoxify the body by eating only certain foods, or to eat only raw foods because that what our ancestors ate, or to eat "superfoods" that burn more calories than other foods. These types of claims are good indicators of quack diet claims, Stephen Barrett, M.D. explains on QuackWatch. The positive thing about these claims is that they're easy to spot. This is not to say that some claims might not have merit. New studies do change the way doctors think about nutrition, and many doctors don't receive much education on nutrition in medical school. On average, doctors receive less than 25 hours of nutrition education, a 2006 study reported in the "Journal of Clinical Nutrition" reported. The study was conducted by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and reported by lead author Kelly Adams.
References
- American Heart Association: Quick-Weight-Loss or Fad Diets
- Every Diet: Fad Diets
- QuackWatch: Twenty-Five Ways to Spot Quacks and Vitamin Pushers
- University of Maryland Medical Center: HCG Diet
- "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:"Status of nutrition education in Medical Schools; Kelly Adams; April 2006
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