NutritionEd:

Someone asked me the other day if I had heard of the Flat Belly Diet; a new diet book put out by the editors of Prevention magazine. I hadn’t heard of it before but could guess just from the title that it was likely another wanna-be fad diet. The person who asked me, of course, had a significant pot belly and so at least he has the motive to buy the book! I gave my usual spiel about how there is no strong research indicating that weight loss can be targeted and certainly not by following a “Flat Belly Diet”. I think I should have moderated the scorn in my voice because the person asking got a little defensive. But really, a diet whose ultimate design is to magically target belly fat? How do people fall for these things? Weight loss is weight loss. If you are going to lose weight, and a great proportion of that weight is around you abdomen, then it stands to reason that any weight loss is going to come from the largest source. It’s all about proportions people!

Anyway, I looked it up today and it appears to be a fairly adequate diet. Not super restrictive or specialized (ie: it’s not high-pro / low carb). It’s basically the Canada’s Food Guide in my opinion with attention to portion sizes, healthy fats, increased fruit and vegetables, and balancing the food groups (though their sample meal plan seems lacking in dairy). Altogether it appears to create a caloric deficit; which of course is the ONLY way you can lose weight.

In summary it appears to be just another company putting a spin on common sense in order to make money. The Canada’s Food Guide is free, people. FREE! “But Ed, this comes in the form of a book, not a pamphlet!” Well, if you want to cart around a book instead of an easy to carry pamphlet go for it (I’d like to see you put the book on the fridge with a magnet). “But this has a user friendly website with tools to help coordinate and track weight loss!” Hey, that sounds great! Good thing the Canada’s Food Guide has a helpful website too….

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/index-eng.php

Man, so many things I want to write about these days and yet so little time. New job, weddings to help plan, condo to buy, shoulder to separate (mine, very very ouch). It’s been a crazy few months! Definitely need to change that and these are some of the topics I’ve been thinking about:

• Health Check program – boon to informed purchasing or only a marketing platform?
• Saline injection into meat – hidden source of sodium, is it really necessary?
• Vaccenic acid – a healthy, natural, trans fat?
• Nutela – ooooh how I want to rant about the commercials for this crap…

My opinions on these topics to follow soon!