Sunday, May 5, 2013

Week 9: Diets

Labels. Health Claims. Packaging. Choices. So many nutritional choices... and so much information. Below is a selection of diets (some conventional, some 'fad') for you to examine. At the end of the article is an investigation for you to complete.




In the unending and increasingly urgent quest for weight loss, we have an abundance of diets to choose from. Faddish diets come and go so fast we can barely learn their formulas. From glorifying particular foods (like the acai berry) to demonizing others (like high-fructose corn syrup) diet promoters hop from one aisle of the grocery store to the next.

In contrast, long-term transformational programs cover all aspects of life, from eating to stress management. Some diets are anchored in geography like the Mediterranean, Scarsdale and Sonoma diets. Others are named after famous people such as the Atkins, Suzanne Somers and Jenny Craig plans. Some associate themselves with a religious reference, for instance, Pastor Rick Warren's Daniel Plan. Others are named after a specific food like the cookie, grapefruit or cabbage soup diet. Others take on descriptive names such as Weight Watchers and TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly).

Some use technical-sounding names, for instance, the hCG Diet, which first surfaced in the '50s. Even for diet groupies, the hCG diet seems severe (and is expensive). Calories are limited to 500 a day, and promoters claim that a daily injection of the pregnancy hormone hCG will make unwanted fat in the wrong places disappear. After reports of health complications, this regimen triggered a warning by the Food and Drug Administration; nonetheless, the hCG diet continues to grow in popularity.

While not as severe as the hCG diet calorie restrictions, all diets share the common goal of limiting calories to achieve weight loss. The dieter, forced to live in a constant state of deprivation and hunger, eventually finds the diet difficult to sustain. When the regimen is predictably discarded, the dieter regains the lost weight and frequently adds a few pounds more.

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Your mission: 

Select a diet plan and evaluate it. Here are the pieces you want to investigate-

 

What is the name of the diet plan?

Step 1

Evaluate the rate of weight loss the product promises

Step 2

Evaluate the type of eating plan offered

Step 3

Evaluate whether the diet offers some kind of maintenance plan after the goals are met

Step 4

Decide what the diet costs

Step 5

Know the health risks of the diets

Step 6

Justify why you would or would not recommend this diet to somebody

By Monday, May 6th @ 2:30:
Click HERE to respond after examining a diet plan of your choice

1 comment:

  1. The diet plan I decided to evaluate is the “Caveman Diet”. The Caveman diet is based on the diet of our “ancestors” of the Paleolithic age over 10,000 years ago. The weight loss rate this diet is undetermined but based on a study of the diet on 14 participants each person loss an average of 5 pounds over a three- week period. The eating plan associated with the Caveman diet is eating meat and offal, chicken, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts( walnuts, Brazil nuts, macadamias, and almonds), berries, and roots. Food items restricted from the diet are grains( bread, pasta, and noodles), beans( string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peas, and snow peas), peanuts and cashews, potatoes and sweet potatoes, dairy products, sugar, and coatings of any kind( breadcrumbs,batter, etc.). The maintenance plan used for this diet is decreasing your amount of meals off the diet from 3 meals per week to 2 meals a week. The cost of the diet could increase your shopping bill because of the need for more expensive cuts of meat and organic produce. Health risks that come with the Caveman diet are osteoporosis, kidney problems, high cholesterol, and constipation and bowel problems. I wouldn't recommend this diet to someone else because the negatives outweigh the positives of this diet. Although, the diet cuts out some key foods that lead to obesity the health risks are just too tremendous to overlook.

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