Low-carb diet
From RationalWiki
The low-carb diet has been popularized in recent years through many fad diets such as Atkins, SugarBusters!, The Zone, South Beach Diet, Protein Power, the caveman diet, and several others.
In theory, foods with a high glycemic index, such as most sugars and refined carbohydrates, cause the body to retain more body fat and cause increased hunger due to fluctuating insulin levels. With some of these diets such as Atkins, an "induction phase" at the beginning of the diet seeks to induce a state of ketosis, tricking the body into consuming its own body fat and shedding water retention by reducing the carbohydrate intake below a certain threshold. In practice, low-carb diets are usually high in saturated fats and excessive in protein intake, leading to increased risk of several diseases from kidney stones to heart disease. Low-carb diets became popular after sensational stories of rapid weight loss, but some critics note the real reason for the weight loss is low-carb diets are so restrictive that most people who try to follow them wind up drastically reducing their caloric intake, and the same weight loss could be achieved through other diets which do not involve such an unhealthy intake of saturated fats.
The Atkins Diet is the best known of these diets. Started by Robert Atkins, it has been around since the early 1970s and considered quackery by most of the medical community for most of its life. After years as a fringe fad diet, for some reason it took off in popularity from about 1998-2004 and spawned a low-carb diet craze that peaked in 2003-04. Several imitators, most notably South Beach and The Zone, remain popular; others like SugarBusters! (a brief craze in 2001) came and went during this time. The inevitable special product lines of low-carb foods proved to be a boon for bargain shoppers when they were marked down to clearance prices once the fad was over. Ironically, the special product lines branded with the South Beach Diet and The Zone brands are laden with - guess what - sugar (although the Atkins and SugarBusters! product lines, to their credit, were not.) So much for "low carb" - sugar is sugar. Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi even got in on the fad with special "half the carbs" mixes (both now discontinued), which were still nonetheless full of high fructose corn syrup (which is sugar).
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