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PLASTIC SURGERY NEWS, SURGERY NEWS, COSMETIC SURGERY NEWS Dcember 2004 NEWS

Fad Diets Fade

Wellness expert Ann Kulze, MD, the author of Dr. Ann's 10-Step Diet: A Simple Plan for Permanent Weight Loss and Lifelong Vitality, is pretty sure that the low-carb craze will wane in 2005, and recent statistics back her up. The percentage of Americans on low-carb diets has dropped by almost half to 4.6 percent at the end of September 2004 from 9 percent in January, its peak, according to data from the NPD Group Inc., a Port Washington, N.Y.-based marketing-research company. "Their popularity is dwindling," she says. "There will be sustainers, but without a doubt there will be many less newcomers to the low-carb approach."

This doesn't mean that the bankrupt bakers of Twinkies and Wonder Bread or any other starchy snack food who lost their shirts as a result of the low-carb craze will be back in the black, but be on the lookout for detractors who brazenly sport T-shirts that read "I eat carbs."

However, "part of this trend is here to stay, and that's the avoidance of the great white hazard — white potatoes, sugar, white flour products, and white rice," Kulze says. "There is just so much rock-solid data to tell us that they increase appetite, promote weight gain, and are not good for health."

So what is?

"More and more the public is on board with the fact that the same strategies that embody healthy eating also help with long-term weight loss — namely increased fruit and vegetable intake," she says. "We are moving away from fad diets, and the public is recognizing that weight and health are inextricably linked and that the best way to do this is to make permanent dietary and lifestyle changes that improve health as well as decrease waistlines."