"I Just Started This New Diet..."

These are words that anyone in the nutrition field is going to hear a lot throughout the years. Since I'm new to the profession it's still a somewhat novel experience for me. I'm also not well versed in the pros and cons of every new diet trend on the market (though I'm familiar with ones that were popular in book form during my years in the book industry). So this weekend when a family friend mentioned a new diet so was undertaking, I listened carefully as she explained the premise. It sounded similar to Atkins so I told her that cutting out carbs was not healthy and that if she was looking to reduce the amount of white flour in her diet she should try challenging herself to only whole grains and to pile on the veggies.

Then, I got a chance to look at the book that describes the diet, The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. There were the standard high-protein, no flour, no sugar recipes. But in the back there was a list of acceptable and unacceptable ingredients to use and there, under the column GOOD FAT was (drum roll please): butter. I cringed. Don't get me wrong - I'll have butter on occasion, but if someone was skimming this book, as I was, they might have seen that and thought to themselves "Oh good! Butter is a good fat! I'll use it all the time now - and lose weight!" It seems likely that this type of misinformation is part of what's leading to so many people gaining weight and getting frustrated when they follow a "diet" or "cure" and don't see any improvement.

Luckily, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) has a link on their website with reviews of popular diet books to help consumers sift through the good, the bad, and the just plain wacky. The reviews are written by Registered Dieticians and tell readers what's good about certain diets and what to be wary of in others. Click here to find the reviews, listed alphabetically by book title.