Edited by Doctor Dora Intagliata
In recent years, aesthetics and physicality have become the cornerstone of our society. This has led to an increase in the number of subjects who come across diets of any kind to be able to lose weight. Every day the sites that deal with dietetics are attacked by a large number of visitors interested in the diet of the moment or miraculous diets! For this reason I draw up a ranking of the most followed diets in recent years. This ranking demonstrates their ineffectiveness and above all the negative effects they can induce.
- Scarsdale diet → diet based on the complete elimination of bread, pasta and other carbohydrates. You can eat at will meat, fish, eggs and cheeses: hunger passes due to the food imbalance. The body goes into acidosis! If this diet is protracted over time, it can induce deficiencies in macro and micronutrients and cause real pathologies, especially affecting the urinary tract and the liver.
- Diets based on "meal replacement" → is a diet characterized by the use of liquid diet products or in bars, in place of one or both main meals. This is an effective and excellent diet also from the point of view of introducing all the essential nutrients for our body. Its only flaw is that it is unsustainable over time: who would give up a nice plate of spaghetti or a good pizza for some bars?
- Mayo diet → is characterized by the intake of 1 grapefruit before each meal. It is thought that this citrus fruit has the function of "fat burning". This belief is absolutely false; grapefruit cannot replace a balanced low-calorie diet!
- Beverly Hills diet → only fruit for 10 days, with gradual addition of foods from the 11th day onwards and illogical exclusion of others. It is an unbalanced diet that can cause severe protein deficiencies and induce diarrhea, with a decrease in lean mass rather than fat mass.
- Hay's diet → is based on the concept of not associating alkalogenic foods with acid-forming foods. It is basically made up of fiber and whole foods. This diet is based on popular and therefore unscientific beliefs, not taking into account the impact that it can have on the intestinal system.
- Partial fasting → provides for the introduction of only low-calorie liquids (tea, herbal teas, mineral salts, etc). It is a bad diet as it can lead to important eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. It is also unbalanced and dangerous, leading to excessive loss of lean mass. When it is interrupted, the weight increase will be greater than before the start of the diet.
- Minestrone diet: came from the usual America. It includes minestrone with only vegetables for ten days. Dangerous for such a long period because the most important elements of your country are missing.
- Dash Diet → The Dash diet is based on a rather high amount of fruits, vegetables and fiber. If you are not used to eating fruit and vegetables or if you do not normally ingest a good amount of dietary fiber, you risk getting diarrhea. The advice is therefore to get used to gradually replacing food with fruit and vegetables. This diet is not recommended for long periods.
- Atkins diet → is a points diet, with an anti-physiological outline of the foods that must be introduced throughout the day. It is mainly composed of fats. This diet is unbalanced, rich in fats capable of inducing ketosis, and massive loss of fluids.
- Simeons Diet → is a diet that involves the introduction of about 600 Kcal per day, accompanied by injections of hormones, especially gonadropin. This diet was useless both for the restrictiveness of the diet itself from the point of view of calories, and for the ineffectiveness of the gonadropins.
