Pissing me off today: Fad Diets

Saw this article in the Google News: Health section.

Limiting flavors may be key to a successful diet
CHICAGO - Forget counting carbs and calories. Obesity researcher Dr. David Katz says the way to lose weight is to limit flavors.

Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, says people stop eating when the brain's appetite center registers 'full.'” But eating lots of flavors promotes overeating because different sensors must register full for appetite to subside, Katz says.

The typical American diet 'is a mad cacophony of flavors,'” Katz said this week during a book-tour stop in Chicago.

Instead, Katz advocates flavor-themed meals - an apple day, for example, or a sesame day, even an occasional chocolate day.

A "mad cacophony of flavors"!?!?!? Has this guy ever seen a sterotypical American meal? Last I checked, American food had a pretty solid reputation as being bland and boring. If "sensory-specific satiety" was a really significant phenomenon I don't think SuperExtraDuper Super Sized Fries would exist, or 72 oz Super Gulps. Most of us with a weight problem eat what's in front of us, even after we're full. That's why big plates, eating ice cream out of the pint, and buffets are evil.

Let's look at a typical suggested day of food:

For “tomato” day, breakfast is a sandwich of two slices of while grain bread, one soft-cooked egg, two slices of tomato and 1 tablespoon of part-skin mozzarella cheese. Morning snack is 12 cherry tomatoes with two tablespoons of hummus. Lunch is tomato and black bean Mediterranean salad in half a whole-wheat pita. Afternoon snack is 12 baked corn chips and one-third cup tomato salsa. Dinner is baked tilapia with tomatoes, olives and capers, cooked bulgur wheat, sauteed cauliflower florets, tossed garden salad with chickpeas. Dessert is peach-blueberry salad.

Total calories: 1,535, 24 percent from fat, 20 percent from protein, 56 percent from carbohydrates; 53 grams fiber; 272 milligrams cholesterol; 2,186 milligrams sodium.

Ah ha! Could it be that people in his "study" lost weight because they actually ate HEALTHIER food? Hm, could be. I somehow doubt there's a "white bread" day. You'll notice that Tomato Day didn't involve a heaping plate of white pasta and tomato sauce. What garbage. They even list the calories for crying out loud! And are capres and olives not flavorful? Will they not fight with the tomato flavor, urging you to eat more and more according to this theory? Come on! The first sentance in the AP article is a crime: "Forget about counting calories" it says. Yet here we go, he has you count out the number of chips you can eat with dinner, limiting your calories. And did anyone else notice the 53 grams of fiber. 53! I bet that would fill you up a lot more than "sensory-specific satiety" does.

Top that off with a paragraph buried deep in the article, that the book recommends 30 minutes of exercise most days, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, etc, and we see that the whole "flavor diet" is a thin sheet over the same boring health advice we all know and love to hate. The article even ends with this: "Whether Katz’s diet works because it limits flavors, or because it promotes healthy eating and exercise, is unclear, Raynor said. 'If you’re eating healthy and exercising, you’re going to lose weight,' she said." *sigh*

What I'm afraid of is the Atkins Effect: people will think they can eat as much food as they want as long as it meets the flavor requirements, leading to lots of pineapple ice cream and not much pineapple shrimp. And shame on the press for not being more critical of this garbage and (probably) basically reprinting the book's press release as the first half of the article.