The Truth About Fad Diets

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Diet trends surface regularly, and many people are always looking for a quick and easy way to lose weight and become what they think is healthy. On Point reports on health and fad diets, with Professor Terri Lisagor, from CSUN’s Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science Program, and Liz Voosen, a certified nutritionist.

Fad diets are diets that claim to help people with weight loss. There are several well known ones, such as the Paleo Diet, the Five Bite Diet, the Master Cleanse, Juicing, Gluten-free diets and many more.

“How do you spell diet?…and what are the first three letters of diet?” asked Professor Terri Lisagor from CSUN’s Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Science Program. “Diets that we see in our society are built-in failures…When we are trying to give people advice, we want them to practice balance, variety, moderation, and exercise.”

She said the best way to get fit is by balancing the food groups, having variety in those food groups, not feeling guilty about food intake, and exercising.

Many of these diets do become trends. Seeing a celebrity endorsing something immediately makes people want to try it. There’s always an assumption that it’ll work. The truth is, nobody really knows if a fad diet will work unless real research and time is put into making sure all parts of a fad diet are understood. Extreme programs like the Master Cleanse can be particularly unhealthy.

“It can be really dangerous,” Certified Nutritionist Liz Voosen said. “You’re really just drinking, and not eating anything, and you can end up with all kinds of health problems. People actually pass out from it, because their blood sugar goes all wonky…” Learning how to eat right is essential; just juicing won’t fix anything. “You lose a couple of pounds, [and think] ‘hey that’s great!’, [but] you can’t sustain it,” Voosen said.

“I think we’re all searching for health,” Voosen said, “and we’re all searching for what is the right diet…[but fad diets] just don’t work and they don’t last.”

“People are looking for an easy fix,” Lisagor said.

Voosen and Lisagor said education, overall health and cultural preferences should be taken into consideration when trying to find ways to help people eat better.

Moderator: Melanie Rosales

Producer: Marissa Martinez

Anchor: Angela Bickmann

Social Media Editors: Karin Abcarians and Jesyka Dunn

Reporters: Karin Abcarians, Angela Bickmann, Jesyka Dunn, Marissa Martinez and Melanie Rosales

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