It seems everyone today is either on a diet or maintains a restricted diet, such as being a vegan or vegetarian. Gone are the days when everyone used to be able to eat everything listed on a restaurant’s menu. While this narrowing of food choices can be difficult for anyone hosting a dinner party, it has had one huge benefit for people: people are now more aware of their diet and what they are choosing to eat on a daily basis then every before in history.
Almost everyone is now an expert in what is good for them. Because of the increased interest in health and fitness and people’s growing understanding of how their bodies work, the diets that are offered by experts and fitness professionals have become more complex and sophisticated over time. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular diets around today.
South Beach Diet
The South Beach Diet is one of the most popular diets amongst people because it takes a gentle approach to losing weight and modifying your diet. The doctor who created the diet for his patients, Dr Agatston, had found that people had trouble losing weight on a low fat diet. His solution was to create a diet that focused on good carbs (such as unprocessed foods like vegetables and whole grains), and good fats (lean meats, oily fish and nuts). The South Beach Diet is not “low carb” like the Atkins Diet, as it does not restrict all carbs (only the so-called “bad” ones). The basic premise of the diet is that eating healthier food can eliminate many of today’s health issues such as heart problems, diabetes and weight gain.
The Raw Food Diet
Eating a diet of raw food has become popular as people have shunned the normal high fat, high salt and sugar western diet. It has been shown that cooking food above about 40 Celsius can often destroy the beneficial enzymes in the food, as well as the vitamins in vegetables. Many vegetarians who don’t eat meat, and vegans who eat no animal products have naturally fallen into eaten a raw food diet. There are also a group of people who adhere to a raw animal products diet, which includes fermented fish and meats. It is believed that the benefits of eating only raw, unprocessed food is that we avoid eating what our bodies don’t need. Raw Food Diet recipes can be sourced online or consider buying a book from a reputable health professional.
Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean Diet is based on the traditional diet of Southern European countries such as Greece, Crete and Southern Italy. The foods included in the diet are believed to be low in unhealthy fats and high in dietary fiber. Examples of the foods included in the diet are fish and poultry (with only small amounts of red meat), olive oil, nuts and plants, and even small quantities of wine (which is now thought to contain beneficial levels of the anti-oxidant, resveratrol). The Mediterranean has gained a lot of traction among western countries as it is known that people in the Mediterranean region have lower rates of obesity, diabetes and cancer.