Diets

Fun Facts About Diets

• The word "diet" comes from a Greek word meaning "way of life" or "manner of living." This suggests for the ancients, it wasn't just about temporary food restriction. They conceived of a holistic approach to health, including nutrition, physical activity and daily habits.
• The Mediterranean diet is consistently ranked as the best overall diet. It focuses on plant-based foods, healthy fats like olive oil, and lean proteins.
• Intermittent fasting mimics ancestral, hunter-gatherer eating patterns which were charaterized by periods of food scarcity followed by abundance. A common approach is to fast 14–16 hours daily and eat within an 8–10 hour window, or else to eat normally for five days, then reduce caloric intake on two days.
• The Atkins diet helped popularize bacon and eggs as a staple breakfast in dieting culture by promoting a high-fat, low-carbohydrate approach to weight loss. It challenged the prevailing low-fat, high-carb dietary advice that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s.
• The South Beach Diet is a three-phase, lower-carb diet that emphasizes high-fiber and lean-protein. It is meant to improve heart health and promote weight loss by stabilizing blood sugar. It was developed by a Miami-based cardiologist in the mid-1990s and peaked in popularity around 2003–2004.
• The raw food diet holds that heating food above 118°F destroys natural enzymes. Followers of the diet believe uncooked food reduces the strain on the body's digestive system, so they avoid cooking.
• Veganism is a strict form of vegetarianism. Vegans avoid dairy, eggs and honey, while vegetarians focus on the elimination of meat and fish instead. It is estimated that about 1–3% of the world's population is vegan, while 15% are vegetarian.
• Flexible, adaptable and balanced diets are widely considered the most sustainable for long-term health and weight management. Crash diets are considered the worst approach because they trigger a survival mechanism that encourages rapid weight re-gain.