You could say the same thing about low-carb diets and any diet for that matter (and many people do). Low-carb popularity has gone in and out of fashion for at least 150 years (possibly thousands of years, at least according to some low-carb authors).
I don't think diet alone can explain the obesity epidemic. Food may not even be the most important factor (as a culture, we've gotten and are continuing to get more sedentary much faster than we've become obese). Even our thin adults and thin children are experiencing lifestyle diseases - are they diet related, or due to the fact that people don't play or work as actively as in the past?
Too many things have changed in the last 15 years, to blame any single one with any credibility. Considering the dismal weight loss success rates, you could more easily say "you cannot lose weight by any method." Permanent weight loss is acheivable (I've met people and read of people who've done it), but the the successful losers have not all used the same method (and some even used low-fat dieting).
I think too many people are saying "You cannot lose weight using...." as if weight loss were a simple matter, a problem easily enough determined and solved with a one-size-fits-all solution.
I've studied weight loss for nearly 45 years, and the success stories run the gamut of food plans. Diets also rise and fall repeatedly, and very few "new" diets are truly new, they're mostly rehashes of plans that have been around for decades. By that definition, none of them work.
Some people argue that "all diets work if you follow them." I think that's garbage too. I think that different people have different physical and emotional needs. There is no one-size-fits-all method that will work for everyone - for physical as well as emotional and cultural reasons.
It sucks to find a food plan that works for you, and have everyone tell you that it "doesn't work," because they tried it and it didn't work. Low-carb dieting works best for me, and I've had my fill of people telling me it won't work or that it's dangerous, unhealthy, or unsustainable. But then again, every plan I've followed (and I've followed hundreds if not thousands) has inspired the same reaction - there's always someone telling me that whatever plan I'm on "can't work" because if it did, obesity wouldn't exist anymore (only true of course, if you believe that there's a single treatment or cure that hasn't yet been discovered).
Unfortunately people tend to treat diets like religions - everyone believing theirs is the "one true answer for everyone." Until we realize it isn't a one-size-fits-all problem, very little progress will be made in identifying which diets work best for which people. Instead obesity researchers will continue to look for the mythical holy grail of weight loss, the "best method" instead of developing a tool to answer the real question "best for whom?"
Last edited by kaplods; 05-05-2011 at 05:38 AM.
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