Wacky Diet Update — Everything old is new again....

There have been more wacky diets in the news lately — none of them are actually new, but are just the latest renditions of fads we’ve seen come and go. There's been another:

· drink water diet (#999)

· hypnotist diet (he sells a CD, too)

· diets that claim they can be tailored to your individual biology and sugar metabolism

· nutrigenomic diet where “food talks to your genes”

· Stoneage diet plan, claiming if you only eat real food primitive people ate you’ll be thinner and free from chronic diseases — it neglects to say, of course, that primitive people didn’t live long enough to develop those chronic diseases of aging, either

· metabolism diet which claims if you eat the right foods, eliminate the bad ones, detoxify your body, and rebalance your life, you’ll ignite the fat-burning furnace that’s been lying dormant (there’s lots of unprocessed foods, fiber and supplements involved, too)

· cellulite diet where you peddle on a bicycle while infrared lights are shined onto your “problem areas” to melt away the cellulite

Cellulite is the popular word for the dimpled appearance of fat, but it’s not a medical term, it’s just regular adipose tissue. A double blind study in which fat cells were gathered by needle biopsy from fat and lumpy fat (cellulite) areas were tested by pathologists and found to be exactly the same. Where fat is distributed on our bodies and its appearance is hereditary. There have been, and continue to be, a lot of quackery gimmicks to remove cellulite (read all about them here. We looked at infrared recently, for those who missed it.

· And we've seen the latest version of the calorie counter or food diary (and having Mom there to tell you what to eat): the cell phone diet, where you phone in to a diet service and transmit a photo of your meals; a dietician on the other end makes an analysis and gives diet advice. This one’s being promoted by the Health Ministry in Japan.

But nothing can top this priceless article on diet fads.

I recommend reading the entire thing. Mike Wuebben examines some alternative approaches to weight loss that will leave you rolling in the aisles. He describes such offerings as the Trip to the zoo workout; the Thorn patch diet; the 9-volt nutritional supplement, and more!

Weight Loss (With Some Risk Of Death)

I recently was introduced to the latest diet fad quite by accident. I was eating alone at a Midtown Manhattan restaurant when two rather loud men at a table near me started talking about the maple syrup detox fast. The louder of the two said, “For a week I drink nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper." Then he added, “and I masturbate for an hour every morning, which burns a ton of calories."

Aside from losing my appetite, my first thought was: “Do you set an egg timer for that?" My second thought was, maybe this guy was onto something. With the obesity rate in America at epidemic proportions, maybe it's time to think outside the box (pardon the sophomoric pun) when it comes to losing weight....

Fact or fiction? It’s getting hard to tell anymore. :)