The #1 bad fad diet in recent times is the hCG diet. It's nothing less than a scam. Basically how it works is you diet with a severe caloric deficit (<1000 calories per day) and take a homeopathic pregnancy hormone (!?) to boot. I'm not going to talk much about it because ranting about the sheer stupidity of this diet has been done before.
Speaking about sheer stupidity, there's this thing called Applied Kinesiology which is almost on par with homeopathy.
It is important to note that a lot of these pseudoscientific things are advocated and sold by chiropractors. It is important to know that chiropractors are not doctors, so don't trust them with anything other than popping your back. In fact, chiropractic practice and pseudoscience are closely tied together, so tread lightly. However, even doctors and other legitimate professionals (nutritionists, trainers, etc.) can promote idiotic stuff. Don't blindly trust professionals who are out of their element. But trust me because I have a built-in science BS detector and I do my research.
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| Shut up, Donny. |
Back to bad diets, there are a few more I want to mention:
- Diets consisting of only fruits and/or vegetables (in juice form or not) are stupid. While these are good for you as part of your diet, a severe lack of proteins and fats is not good for you.
- The Master Cleanse and any kind of "cleanse" or "detox" is based on pseudoscience.
- Long term fasting means malnutrition. You don't want to starve yourself and harm your well-being. However, short term or intermittent fasting is great.
- Low fat diets are bad because your body needs fat to make hormones, and eating insufficient amounts of fat does not "force" your body to use its own stored fat.
In general, if a diet requires you to buy any special product and/or is unsustainable in the long term, stay the hell away from it.
