Term Paper on "Fad Diets Such as Atkins"

Term Paper 3 pages (1070 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Fad Diets Such as Atkins

An increasing number of body-conscious Americans have taken to dieting in the last few years. This is hardly surprising in a youth-worshiping culture. While weight watching is an essentially healthy activity and a welcome development, most dieters, instead of following a common sense, long-term approach to dieting, are on the lookout for easy short cuts. Several "low-carb" diet programs, e.g., the Atkins' Diet have been devised to cater for this demand and have attained tremendous popularity. Clearly such diet fads miss the true path to weight loss and overall health: a balanced diet with moderate exercise besides posing serious health problems. This explains why most popular fad diets, particularly Atkins', are based on faulty, unproven theories and describes some of the health problems that may accompany such diet programs.

It has been commonly known for ages that the food we eat provides us with energy in the form of calories. We consume these calories in our bodies for our body functions -- the amount of calories burnt depending mainly on the nature and duration of physical activity and to a lesser degree, on metabolic differences in individuals due to genetic reasons. If our calorie-intake is greater than our calorie-consumption, we put on weight; if our intake is less than our consumption we lose weight. Low carb diets such as Atkins' purport to circumvent this basic fact of nutrition and attribute the weight loss to factors such as insulin resistance, ketosis, and increased fat burning. On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes apparent that such claims have no scientific basis and the low carb fad diets carry significant health risks.


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