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Fad diets in america
What makes a diet a fad
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How far would someone go if they desperately needed to lose weight? A person truly in need of weight loss would go to any length just to drop the necessary pounds to continue living properly. In America, there has been a growth in fad diets. Fad diets demand a strict, unhealthy eating regimen that could possibly endanger a person’s life. The influence fad diets have placed on the society over the years is hurting humans’ wellbeing and it needs to stop. Fad diets need to be criminalized because they lack the necessary nutrients to live properly, they inhibit effective cognitive ability, and they cause children to have the wrong perspective of a proper diet. When a person diets, their weight needs to be maintained in a healthy manner. If weight is lost in a rapid manner then the body will not respond well. Fad diets cause rapid weight loss that may make the user feel like they are doing well, but in the end their health will be affected in a terrible way. “Fad diets… never worked, and they never will” (Chapman). These diets are being recognized as something that actually helps those in need is not seen in this age. This world does not need those types of diets since they cannot even do their jobs properly. Nothing good has come from them. “Fad diets are generally unhealthful not only because they lack vitamins and mineral, essential fats, and healthful carbohydrates by also because they can cause serious damage.” (Chapman) The human body gets most of its nutrients from what it consumes. It will respond very negatively and sometimes fatally. Chapman also talked about how when the body is not getting the correct nutrients that it will start consuming The body starts to break down the muscle just so it can survive when the correct nutrients are not in the diet. This can become physically visible if it is allowed to continue on for an extended amount of time. This
American health, specifically our obesity epidemic, has grown into a trending media topic. A quick Google search will bring up thousands of results containing a multitude of opinions and suggested solutions to our nation’s weight gain, authored by anyone ranging from expert food scientists to common, concerned citizens. Amongst the sea of public opinion on obesity, you can find two articles: Escape from the Western Diet by Michael Pollan and The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food by Michael Moss. Each article presents a different view on where the blame lies in this public health crisis and what we should do to amend the issue. Pollan’s attempt to provide an explanation pales in comparison to Moss’s reasonable discussion and viable
But not all fad diets are necessarily bad; some fad diets help with portions but are not supposed to be used for long periods of time. Weight Watchers for example, is supposed to help its users lose 10% of their body weight and then after
No one wants to be or feel like they are overweight, unhealthy, or unattractive. When someone in the general public looks in the mirror or steps on the scale, and they are not satisfied with what is being shown, one of the first ideas to bubble to the surface is dieting. There are so many dieting solutions out there and one of the most popular are the fad diets. Dieting should be about getting healthy and losing weight in a healthy way. Fad diets however, are about losing a lot of weight in a disproportionally short amount of time. Due to the loss of weight that the dieter wanted, when they reach their goal weight, they stop doing the fad diet and go back to their regular diet. This causes the weight that they shed to be put back on again in a disproportionally short amount of time, which is also just as unhealthy. This cycle of losing and gaining weight is only one of the many dangers of fad diets.
One of the main differences between healthy diet and exercise and fad dieting is they can yield very different long term results. When fad dieting, you may be able to drop quite a bit of weight in a short period of time, but rest assured you will most likely see those pounds again. Fad diets focus on losing weight too quickly. The initial weight you lose is water weight, but as soon as you go back to regular food the pounds lost will return. Fad dieting can also wreak havoc on your muscles, and cause your body to go into starvation mode. Fad dieting works off of the idea that since your body needs fat to produce energy, it will burn the access fat that is stored to get that energy. The problem with this theory is that when you deprive your body of the necessary nutrients it needs, it then stores all the fat it can and starts burning energy from your muscles. The loss of your muscles slows down your metabolism, thus making it more difficult to lose weight in the long run. Healthy dieting promotes a lifestyle change, allowing for results...
Not only do low-fat diets not work but they are dangerous towards our body. Our body needs certain fats to sustain energy and support cell growth. Low-fat diets may worsen HDL cholesteric and triglycerides. Because low-fat diets have not been successful towards many people, they turn around to face another lie. They begin to abandon the idea of taking low-fat diets and turn to high-fat diets. The super-high-fat Atkins diet or zone and sugar busters diet which are just as flawed as the low-fat diets. Many people find it hard to lose weight and even on these diets they tend to still gain weight. Many of the reasons why diets high and low in fat or carbohydrates don’t work are because they are not accurate. They are hard to keep up so they eventually stop the diet. They set goals that seem almost unrealistic and the processes of keeping the diet seem even harder than taking the weight off. Obesity has become a big epidemic in America. Americans tend to look for the easy way out. Getting on a diet that seems like a good idea without realizing how unrealistic it can become. How it promises to make you lose 5lbs a month if you stay committed. Lies. The narrow-minded focus on fats has been a failure that seems to have worsened the problem of obesity. The best way to keep the body safe is to avoid smoking, eating right and exercising. These healthy lifestyles will change the course of the death sentence that most Americans carry upon
The article “The Skinny on Low-fat Diets” by Alan Ling is about the drawbacks of low-fat diets. The author talks about how low-fat diets don’t necessarily work and uses facts to strengthen her claim. One of the ways the author strengthen their claim is by showing the other side of the argument. The author includes this information to strengthen her claim and show readers that they can defend their argument from others.
The Western Diet mainly consists of fried foods, refined grains, sugar, high carbohydrate and fats, and meats (3). It has been hypothesized that having a Western Diet increases one’s chances for developing depression. There has been a great deal of research into why the western diet increase’s one chance of having depression. A common sense reason maybe that the Western Diet consisted of large amounts carbohydrates, fats and sugars which promotes obesity and then causes depression (1). More scientific evidence suggest that having a improper diet like the Western Diet negatively affects peripheral and central dopamine, which are neurotransmitters (chemical which transmit signals across the synapse from the nerve cell to the target cell) directly linked to the mental health of the brain and are negatively affected by high fat diets (4). Research has also suggested that having a poor nutrition status such as lacking folate (a natural water form of vitamin bg which is crucial for many of the bodies processes) and key vitamins like vitamin b12 significantly increases the risk of depression in elderly people (5). Research into the topic of dietary habits and mental health is very crucial with the growing rates of obesity and depression in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Thus, does having poor dietary habits increase the likelihood of having depression? The likelihood of developing depression has been linked to the type of diet one consumes such as the Western Diet, Diets Low in Fat and Carbohydrates and weight control diets like binge eating.
In “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” by, Mary Maxfield (pp.442-447), she affirms a bright argument about how food is not moral or immoral. Therefore, you can eat whatever you desire and not suffer any negative side effects, which she ignores. Her key points including stated facts such as “Culturally,we resist these scientific findings,” that people can be fat and healthy, “in favor of a perspective that considers fatness fatal and thinness immortal.”(pp.445) The main point to Maxfield’s claim in healthy eating, is being active and living a fit lifestyle. In “Escape From The Western Diet” (pp.420-427)by Michael Pollan, his argument is to help the American community be enlightened with
This paper will look at two areas, which are physical and mental problems. Fad diets are becoming more popular because the consumers spend a huge amount of their money to follow specific type of diets to lose weight hastily as industry contributes to the dissemination of more books and magazines that deceive people and take their money. The FTC deceives consumers by using advertisement weight-loss and as a result it has collected almost $107 million since 2010 (Giorgianni, 2014). In addition, people need to increase their awareness of fad diets by knowing the negative impacts of it.
Obesity in the United States is a major issue. Because there is such a high obesity rate, there have been so many diets established to try and reduce these constantly rising rates. A lot of these weight-loss diets that have been established are known as fad diets. A fad diet is a diet that becomes popular quickly, and may die out just as quickly. In the United States, there are some popular and healthy fad diets such as the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, and Weight Watchers.
Most Americans do not care enough to take a look at the nutritional values of the food that he or she is consuming. That is why America has the highest percentage of obesity in the world. This is a serious problem because one in every three adults is obese, and one in every six children is obese. There are many factors that go into the regular American diet, but most of those factors are not appealing nor is it healthy. Americans put way too much processed food into their daily diet. Some would say that other countries diets superior the American diet because of nutritional values that it carries. Other countries have proven that an active lifestyle is a huge element in the average weight of the country. There are many things that Americans could change about their diets and lifestyle that would help them to become healthier.
Obesity and overweight remain the two major social problems in the United States. Apart from the fact that obesity and overweight are dangerous by themselves, they also cause a variety of negative health consequences. Our lives our overloaded with tasks and obligations, and we often choose to eat something fast. “Fast”, however, does not necessarily imply “useful”, and more and more people face the risks of becoming obese even at young age. Because obesity has already become a national i...
According to recent statistics, every year Americans spend about $50 billion on products and services promoted to help them lose weight. Many of the overweight and obese people that join commercial weight loss programs are looking for a quick fix to lose the weight, such as fad diets and dietary supplements that are marketed to burn fat fast. However, many of these diets offer little success or success for a short time, resulting in many gaining the weight back a short time afterwards. Fad diets are “a trendy practice that has widespread appeal among a population. After a period, however, people lose interest in the practice, and it becomes no longer fashionable. People often lose weight while following fad diets, but usually regain much of
Most fad diets do not focus on meeting the nutritional requirements of your body, but on losing weight quickly. This encourages unhealthy eating habits as many people result to restricting their intake of foods that have essential nutrients. In fact, the diet programs are designed to take advantage of the willingness of people to attempt anything to lose weight or feel and look
A sad fact in American society is that thousands of people search for the elusive dream of being thin. On any given day, one finds neighbors, friends, and relatives on some kind of diet. Dieters assume various disguises, but the noteworthy ones are the "bandwagoneer," the "promiser" and the "lethal loser."