An individual's diet is the sum of food and drink that one habitually consumes. Dieting is the practice of attempting to achieve or maintain a certain weight through diet. [1] People's dietary choices are often affected by a variety of factors, including ethical and religious beliefs, clinical need, or a desire to control weight.
Not all diets are considered healthy. Some people follow unhealthy diets through habit, rather than through a conscious choice to eat unhealthily. Terms applied to such eating habits include "junk food diet" and "Western diet". Many diets are considered by clinicians to pose significant health risks and minimal long-term benefit. This is particularly true of "crash" or "fad" diets – short-term, weight-loss plans that involve drastic changes to a person's normal eating habits.
Only diets covered on Wikipedia are listed under alphabetically sorted headings.
Some people's dietary choices are influenced by their religious, spiritual or philosophical beliefs.
A desire to lose weight is a common motivation to change dietary habits, as is a desire to maintain an existing weight. Many weight loss diets are considered by some to entail varying degrees of health risk, and some are not widely considered to be effective. This is especially true of "crash" or "fad" diets. [15]
Many of the diets listed below could fall into more than one subcategory. Where this is the case, it is noted in that diet's entry.
A very low calorie diet is consuming fewer than 800 calories per day. Such diets are normally followed under the supervision of a doctor. [22] Zero-calorie diets are also included.
Crash diets are very-low-calorie diets used for the purpose of very fast weight loss. [33] [34] [35] They describe diet plans that involve making extreme, rapid changes to food consumption, but are also used as disparaging terms for common eating habits which are considered unhealthy. This diet is dangerous and can lead to sudden death when not done in a medically supervised setting. [36] [37] Several diets listed here are weight-loss diets which would also fit into other sections of this list. Where this is the case, it will be noted in that diet's entry.
Detox diets involve either not consuming or attempting to flush out substances that are considered unhelpful or harmful. Examples include restricting food consumption to foods without colorings or preservatives, taking supplements, or drinking large amounts of water. The latter practice in particular has drawn criticism, as drinking significantly more water than recommended levels can cause hyponatremia. [42] There is no scientific evidence of any benefit from detox diets, and so they are considered to be pseudoscientific. [43] [44]
People's dietary choices are sometimes affected by intolerance or allergy to certain types of food. There are also dietary patterns that might be recommended, prescribed or administered by medical professionals for people with specific medical needs.
A fad 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. [62] [63] [64] [65] [66] There is no single definition of what a fad diet is, encompassing a variety of diets with different approaches and evidence bases, and thus different outcomes, advantages and disadvantages, [63] and it is ever-changing. [62] [63] Generally, fad diets promise short-term changes with little effort, and thus may lack educating consumers about whole-diet, whole lifestyle changes necessary for sustainable health benefits. [62] [63] [67] [68] Fad diets are often promoted with exaggerated claims, such as rapid weight loss of more than 1 kg/week or improving health by "detoxification", or even dangerous claims. [63] [64] [69] [70]
Since the "fad" qualification varies over time, social, cultural and subjective view, this list cannot be exhaustive, [62] and fad diets may continue or stop being fads, such as the Mediterranean diet. [71] Some of them have therapeutic indications, such as epilepsy or obesity, [72] [73] and there is no one-size-fits-all diet that would be a panacea for everyone to lose weight or look better. [62] [63] Dieticians are a regulated profession that can distinguish nutritionally sound diets from unhealthy ones. [64]
A vegetarian diet is one which excludes meat. Vegetarians also avoid food containing by-products of animal slaughter, such as animal-derived rennet and gelatin. [142]
Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated way to decrease, maintain, or increase body weight, or to prevent and treat diseases such as diabetes and obesity. As weight loss depends on calorie intake, different kinds of calorie-reduced diets, such as those emphasising particular macronutrients, have been shown to be no more effective than one another. As weight regain is common, diet success is best predicted by long-term adherence. Regardless, the outcome of a diet can vary widely depending on the individual.
The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate fad diet devised by Robert Atkins in the 1970s, marketed with claims that carbohydrate restriction is crucial to weight loss and that the diet offered "a high calorie way to stay thin forever".
Food energy is chemical energy that animals derive from their food to sustain their metabolism, including their muscular activity.
A food pyramid is a representation of the optimal number of servings to be eaten each day from each of the basic food groups. The first pyramid was published in Sweden in 1974. The 1992 pyramid introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was called the "Food Guide Pyramid" or "Eating Right Pyramid". It was updated in 2005 to "MyPyramid", and then it was replaced by "MyPlate" in 2011.
The Scarsdale diet, a high-protein low-carbohydrate fad diet designed for weight loss, created in the 1970s by Herman Tarnower and named for the town in New York where he practiced cardiology, is described in the book The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet Plus Dr. Tarnower's Lifetime Keep-Slim Program. Tarnower wrote the book together with self-help author Samm Sinclair Baker.
A fad diet is a diet that is popular, generally only for a short time, similar to fads in fashion, without being a standard scientific dietary recommendation, and often making unreasonable claims for fast weight loss or health improvements; as such it is often considered a type of pseudoscientific diet. Fad diets are usually not supported by clinical research and their health recommendations are not peer-reviewed, thus they often make unsubstantiated statements about health and disease.
Low-carbohydrate diets 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.
The Mediterranean diet is a concept first invented in 1975 by the American biologist Ancel Keys and chemist Margaret Keys. The diet took inspiration from the supposed eating habits and traditional food typical of Crete, much of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy, and formulated in the early 1960s. It is distinct from Mediterranean cuisine, which covers the actual cuisines of the Mediterranean countries, and from the Atlantic diet of northwestern Spain and Portugal. While inspired by a specific time and place, the "Mediterranean diet" was later refined based on the results of multiple scientific studies.
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. The word diet often implies the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management reasons. Although humans are omnivores, each culture and each person holds some food preferences or some food taboos. This may be due to personal tastes or ethical reasons. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy.
A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods. Plant-based diets encompass a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of fiber-rich plant products such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. They do not need to be vegan or vegetarian, but are defined in terms of low frequency of animal food consumption.
Cat food is food specifically formulated and designed for consumption by cats. As obligate carnivores, cats have specific requirements for their dietary nutrients, namely nutrients found only in meat or synthesized, such as taurine and Vitamin A. Certain nutrients, including many vitamins and amino acids, are degraded by the temperatures, pressures and chemical treatments used during manufacture, and hence must be added after manufacture to avoid nutritional deficiency. Cat food is typically sold as dry kibble, or as wet food in cans and pouches.
Body for Life (BFL) is a 12-week nutrition and exercise program, and also an annual physique transformation competition. The program utilizes a low-fat high-protein diet. It was created by Bill Phillips, a former competitive bodybuilder and previous owner of EAS, a manufacturer of nutritional supplements. It has been popularized by a bestselling book of the same name.
A healthy diet is a diet that maintains or improves overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy.
A diabetic diet is a diet that is used by people with diabetes mellitus or high blood sugar to minimize symptoms and dangerous complications of long-term elevations in blood sugar.
The Vegetarian Diet Pyramid is a nutrition guide that represents a traditional healthy vegetarian diet. Variations of this traditional healthy vegetarian diet exist throughout the world, particularly in parts of North America, Europe, South America, and, most notably, Asia. Given these carefully defined parameters, the phrase "Traditional Vegetarian Diet" is used here to represent the healthy traditional ovo-lacto vegetarian diets of these regions and peoples. A pyramid was created by Oldways Preservation Trust in 1998 with scientific research from Cornell and Harvard University, drawing inspiration from the healthy patterns of eating demonstrated by the Mediterranean diet pyramid.
The South Beach Diet is a popular fad diet developed by Arthur Agatston and promoted in his bestselling 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.
Weight management refers to behaviors, techniques, and physiological processes that contribute to a person's ability to attain and maintain a healthy weight. Most weight management techniques encompass long-term lifestyle strategies that promote healthy eating and daily physical activity. Moreover, weight management involves developing meaningful ways to track weight over time and to identify the ideal body weights for different individuals.
Fred Pescatore is a Manhattan-based author and internist who specializes in nutrition. He is best known as the author of the bestselling children's health book Feed Your Kids Well (1998) and The Hamptons Diet (2004).
Soul food is a kind of African American cuisine that encompasses a variety of fried, roasted, and boiled food dishes consisting of chicken and pork meats, sweet potatoes, corn, leafy greens and other vegetables. Soul food has long been embedded in African American culture, but pushes towards healthy eating habits, for both physical and mental health, have adapted soul food cuisine to fit within health trends. This article will describe modifications of traditional soul food within health trends, including soul food with low carb, soul food with low sugar, soul food with low fat, soul food for vegan and soul food in gluten-free.
Audrey Eyton was an English animal welfare campaigner, journalist and writer. She is best known for creating the F-Plan diet, a high-fibre diet that has been criticized as a fad diet.
'A crash diet is typically a very low-calorie diet, where you eat a very restrictively for a short period of time,' explains Registered Dietician, Helen Bond.
The original Beverly Hills diet was published in 1981 and is regarded by many as being the first fad diet.
After the confirmation of NCGS diagnosis, according to the previously mentioned work-up, patients are advized to start with a GFD [49]. (...) NCGS patients can experience more symptoms than CD patients following a short gluten challenge [77]. (NCGS=non-celiac gluten sensitivity; CD=coeliac disease; GFD=gluten-free diet)
The only treatment for CD, dermatitis herpetiformis (DH) and gluten ataxia is lifelong adherence to a GFD.
For both wheat allergy and coeliac disease the dietary avoidance of wheat and other gluten-containing cereals is the only effective treatment.
Fad-diets can be tempting as they offer a quick-fix to a long-term problem.
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ignored (help)Some population groups seem to be especially wed to the gluten-free diet, with nearly 50% of 910 athletes (including world class and Olympic medalists) adhering to a gluten-free diet, mainly because of the perceived health and energy benefits.
People buy gluten-free food "because they think it will help them lose weight, because they seem to feel better or because they mistakenly believe they are sensitive to gluten."
The British Dietetic Association (BDA) today revealed its much-anticipated annual list of celebrity diets to avoid in 2018. The line-up this year includes Raw Vegan, Alkaline, Pioppi and Ketogenic diets as well as Katie Price's Nutritional Supplements.
'a fad diet by any other name would still be a fad diet.' And the names are legion: the Atkins Diet, the Cheater's Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Zone Diet. Year after year, 'new and improved' diets appear ...
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ignored (help)James Hill wants Americans to shed pounds. But instead of promoting any one fad diet, he embraces most--Atkins, South Beach, grapefruit-only--as relatively effective ways to lose weight.
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ignored (help)Some studies distinguish other food categories such as the pesco-vegetarian diet, which tolerates the consumption of fish and seafood, and the semi-vegetarian diet, which excludes red meat but allows the consumption of other meat products…In addition to these diets, there is flexitarianism…In general, flexitarians adopt a predominantly vegetarian or vegan diet, but may consume meat on special occasions (such as during dinner parties or dining out). In short, a flexitarian is an omnivore who has reduced his consumption of animal products.
Women were defined as non-vegetarians if they reported including red meat in their diet, as semi-vegetarians if they excluded red meat and as vegetarians if they excluded meat, poultry and fish from their diet.
while vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians were more open to new experiences and less food neophobic, they were not more restrained than omnivores. Rather semi-vegetarians; those who restricted only red meat from their diet, and flexitarians; those who occasionally eat red meat, were significantly more restrained than omnivores.