Essay - Evaluating Fad Diets Such as Atkins an Increasing Number of...

Evaluating Fad Diets Such As Atkins

An increasing number of body-conscious Americans have taken to dieting in the last few years. This is hardly surprising in a youth-worshiping culture. While weight watching is an essentially healthy activity ********** a welcome development, most dieters, instead ***** following a common sense, long-term approach to *****, are on the lookout for easy short cuts. Several "low-carb" diet programs, e.g., the ********** Diet have been devised to cater ***** this demand and have attained tremendous popularity. Clearly such diet fads miss the true path to weight loss and overall health: a balanced diet with moderate exercise besides posing serious ***** problems. This explains why most popular fad diets, particularly Atkins', are based on faulty, unproven theories and describes some of the health problems that may accompany ***** diet programs.

It has been *****ly known for ages that the food we eat provides us with energy in the form ***** calories. We consume these ***** in our bodies for ***** body functions—the amount of calories burnt depending mainly on the nature and durati***** of physical activity and to a lesser d*****ree, on met*****bolic differences in individuals due to genetic reasons. If our calorie-intake is greater than our calorie-consumption, we put on *****; if ***** intake is less than our c*****sumption ***** lose weight. Low carb ***** such as Atkins' purport to circumvent this basic fact of nutrition and attribute the ***** loss ***** *****ors ***** as insulin resistance, ketosis, and increased fat burning. On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes apparent that such claims have no scientific basis and the low ***** fad *****s carry significant ***** risks.

All low-carb diets including Atkins are ***** on a structured program of substantially reduced carbohydrate-intake with little or ***** restriction on ***** intake ***** proteins and fats. While there is little doubt that the low-carbohydrate diet results in ***** weight loss in the ***** term for most people, the reasons for such results are m*****represented by the advocates of such diets. Let us examine how ***** weight loss occurs? During the first ***** weeks of the ***** Diet, the so-called "induction" phase, the dieter's ***** goes into starvation mode as it is severely deprived of its preferred fuel—the carbohydrates. In the absence of carbohydrates the body burns fats in an inefficient m*****ner producing toxic *****products called "ketones." To wash these ***** waste products out of the system large ***** of body fluids ***** expelled through urine, which ***** mainly responsible for the rapid loss ***** weight in ***** first few weeks of starting a low c*****rb diet ***** as Atkins'. (Sachiko et al, 2001) The other reason for ***** loss in low carb dieters is the loss of appetite associated ***** ketosis, which leads to ********** total caloric intake. Weight loss may also occur because most dieters find low-carb diets relatively unpalatable in ***** long term and eat ***** calories. Hence, there is no 'magic' behind the weight loss in ***** Diet. Further, loss ***** weight through *****