Run away from magic formulas to lose weight

Run away from miracle diets to lose weight

“Miracle diets” decrease the possibility of getting all the necessary nutrients and increase the probability of suffering from mineral and vitamin deficiencies.

BY Àngela Zorrilla | 04 July 2023

Dissociated, with pills, protein or Paleolithic. What diet is the most effective? In reality, nutrition experts shy away from this type of nutritional methods, which has become more popular in recent years. Now, also coinciding with the summer, many people tend to resort to so-called miracle diets, which are designed to help them lose that extra weight very quickly. 

However, the Spanish Nutrition Foundation (FEN) warns that these diets can constitute, in most cases, “not only fraud but also a serious danger to health”. 

For the FEN, these proposals “lack scientific basis and exaggerate properties and effects that are neither evident nor proven”. The foundation classifies these magical diets under various labels: unbalanced hypocaloric; that is, they contain a very low energy content and whose nutritional distribution is unbalanced; dissociative menus, which allow you to eat everything, but not during the same meal, and exclusionary or psychological diets. Also, there are liquid diets or monodiets. 

They all have in common that they can endanger the patient’s health. In this sense, the American Dietetic Association and the Spanish Association of Dietitians-Nutritionists summarize some of the characteristics of “miracle” diets or fraudulent methods to lose weight. All have in common the unreal promise of quick and magical results, but also the prohibition of food and the suggestion to consume complementary and dietary products to which extraordinary properties are attributed. 

Therefore, dietitians and nutritionists are in favor of complete, non-exclusive, and highly varied diets, and highlight the Mediterranean diet or the Harvard dish as great suggestions for following a healthy diet.

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