Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated and supervised fashion to decrease, maintain, or increase body weight, or to prevent and treat diseases, such as diabetes and obesity. A restricted diet is more often pursued by those wanting to lose weight. Continuous dieting is recommended by US guidelines for obese or diabetic individuals to reduce body weight and improve general health. Some people follow a diet to gain weight. Diets can also be used to maintain a stable body weight and improve health.
The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins. The diet is marketed with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is critical to weight loss. There is no good evidence of the diet's effectiveness in achieving durable weight loss and it may increase the risk of heart disease.
In medicine, wasting, also known as wasting syndrome, refers to the process by which a debilitating disease causes muscle and fat tissue to "waste" away. Wasting is sometimes referred to as "acute malnutrition" because it is believed that episodes of wasting have a short duration, in contrast to stunting, which is regarded as chronic malnutrition. According to the latest UN estimates, an estimated 52 million children under 5 years of age, or 8%, were wasted in 2011. The vast majority, about 70%, of the world's wasted children live in Asia, most in South-Central Asia.
Joel Fuhrman is an American celebrity doctor who advocates what he calls a micronutrient-rich diet.
The Scarsdale diet is a fad diet designed for weight loss created in the 1970s by Herman Tarnower, named for the town in New York where he practiced cardiology, described in the book The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet plus Dr. Tarnower's Lifetime Keep-Slim Program, which Tarnower wrote with an author of self-help books, Sam Sinclair Baker. The diet carries potential health risks and does not instill the kind of healthy eating habits required for sustainable weight loss.
A fad diet, or novelty diet, is a diet that is popular for a time, similar to fads in fashion, without being a standard dietary recommendation, and often promising unreasonably fast weight loss or nonsensical health improvements. There is no single definition of what is a fad diet, encompassing a variety of diets with different approaches and evidence bases, and thus different outcomes, advantages and disadvantages, and it is ever-changing.
Low-carbohydrate diets or carbohydrate-restricted diets (CRDs) are diets that restrict carbohydrate consumption relative to the average diet. Foods high in carbohydrates are limited, and replaced with foods containing a higher percentage of fat and protein, as well as low carbohydrate foods.
Neal D. Barnard is an American author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
A healthy diet is a diet that helps to maintain or improve overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients, micronutrients, and adequate calories.
In human nutrition, the term empty calories applies to foods and beverages composed primarily or solely of sugar, fats or oils, or alcohol-containing beverages. An example is carbonated soft drinks. These supply food energy but little or no other nutrition in the way of vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, or essential fatty acids. Fat contributes nine calories per gram, ethanol seven calories, sugar four calories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advises, "A small amount of empty calories is okay, but most people eat far more than is healthy." The phrase is derived from low nutrient density, which is the proportion of nutrients in a food relative to its energy content.
A very-low-calorie diet (VLCD), also known as semistarvation diet and crash diet, is a type of fad diet with very or extremely low daily food energy consumption. It is defined as a diet of 800 kilocalories (3,300 kJ) per day or less. Modern medically supervised VLCDs use total meal replacements, with regulated formulations in Europe and Canada which contain the recommended daily requirements for vitamins, minerals, trace elements, fatty acids, protein and electrolyte balance. Carbohydrates may be entirely absent, or substituted for a portion of the protein; this choice has important metabolic effects. Medically supervised VLCDs have specific therapeutic applications for rapid weight loss, such as in morbid obesity or before a bariatric surgery, using formulated, nutritionally complete liquid meals containing 800 kilocalories or less per day for a maximum of 12 weeks.
Nutritional rating systems are methods used to communicate the nutritional value of food in a simplified manner. This is done via a ranking or rating, and by targeting the food product to a specific consumer audience. Rating systems are developed by governments, non-profit organisations, private institutions, and companies. Common methods include point systems to rank or rate foods based on general nutritional value, or by giving ratings for specific food attributes, such as cholesterol content. Graphics and symbols are also used to communicate the nutritional values to the targeted audience.
Intermittent fasting, also known as intermittent energy restriction, is an umbrella term for various meal timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting and non-fasting over a given period. Non-caloric, and sometimes low-caloric, drinks can be used during intermittent fasting, contrary to strict fasting which disallows fluid intake in some religious practices.
Fit for Life (FFL) is a diet and lifestyle book series stemming from the principles of orthopathy. It is promoted mainly by the American writers Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. The Fit for Life book series describes a fad diet which specifies eating only fruit in the morning, eating predominantly "live" and "high-water-content" food, and if eating animal protein to avoid combining it with complex carbohydrates.
The South Beach Diet is a popular fad diet developed by Arthur Agatston and promoted in a best-selling 2003 book. It emphasizes eating food with a low glycemic index, and categorizes carbohydrates and fats as "good" or "bad". Like other fad diets, it may have elements which are generally recognized as sensible, but it promises benefits not backed by supporting evidence or sound science.
Master Cleanse is a modified juice fast that permits no food, substituting tea and lemonade made with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. The diet was developed by Stanley Burroughs, who initially marketed it in the 1940s, and revived it his 1976 book The Master Cleanser. Proponents claim that the diet tones, reduces and cleanses the body, allowing the body to heal itself. There is no evidence that the diet removes any toxins or that it achieves anything beyond temporary weight loss, followed by rapidly regaining the lost weight.
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead is a 2010 American documentary film which follows the 60-day journey of Australian Joe Cross across the United States as he follows a juice fast to regain his health under the care of Joel Fuhrman, Nutrition Research Foundation's Director of Research. Cross and Robert Mac, co-creators of the film, both serve on the Nutrition Research Foundation's Advisory Board. Following his fast and the adoption of a plant-based diet, Cross states in a press release that he lost 100 pounds and discontinued all medications. During his road-trip Cross meets Phil Staples, a morbidly obese truck driver from Sheldon, Iowa, in a truck stop in Arizona and inspires him to try juice fasting. A sequel to the first film, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2, was released in 2014.
Joe Cross is an Australian entrepreneur, author, filmmaker, and wellness advocate. He is most known for his documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead in which he tells the story of his 60-day juice fast. He is the founder and CEO of Reboot with Joe, a health and lifestyle brand at the same time Joe was also an engineer working with different companies on a rig, what a talented man with two careers.
The Daniel Fast is a religious partial fast that is popular among Evangelical Protestants in the United States in which meat, wine, and other rich foods are avoided in favor of vegetables and water for typically three weeks in order to draw the believer closer to the God of Christianity. The fast is based on the lifelong kosher diet of the Jewish hero Daniel in the Biblical Book of Daniel and the three-week mourning fast in which Daniel abstained from all meat and wine. A similar observance can be seen with the 40-day season of Lent that is observed by Orthodox, Catholic, and some Mainline Protestant Christians, though the Daniel Fast can be as short as 10 days. The passage in Chapter 1 refers to a 10-day test wherein Daniel and others with him were permitted to eat vegetables and water to avoid the Babylonian king's food and wine. After remaining healthy at the end of the 10-day period, they continued the vegetable diet for the three years of their education. The passage in Chapter 10 refers to a three-week fast of no meat, wine, or rich food.
