Nicole Jumper Essay -- Weight Loss Diet Nutrition Papers

Nicole Jumper The desire to change one’s body image is very prevalent in today’s society; and in most cases what people want to change is their weight. Companies who market diet programs and miracle diet drugs are very much aware of this commonality among consumers and take advantage of the susceptible nature of those who want to lose the weight and lose it fast. Among the multitude of pills, programs and promises that are offered as cures to the unhappiness of being fat, one new concept has emerged that stretches the boundaries of logic: the catabolic diet. WHAT IS THE CATABOLIC DIET? The catabolic diet is based on the concept that a person can eat â€Å"catabolic† foods that actually have a negative calorie effect. These are foods that supposedly take a person more calories to digest them than the food itself actually contains. Simply put, they are foods that burn fat instead of creating it. (http://www.rarebooks.net/beck/cataboli.htm) INFORMATION FOUND ON THE NET The creators of the catabolic diet have used the Internet as their primary marketing tool; therefore, there are many sites about the diet. Some are blatant advertisements and others pose as being informative and factual. The bottom line: all the sites found on the catabolic diet are looking to make a profit and want the browser to buy into a program. One site, http://www.blackbeard.com/newlook/, claims that the catabolic diet is so effective that, â€Å"[It] works three times faster than starvation.† Yet, after making this statement the site also says that the â€Å"Catabolic Diet is a medically created diet. . .† Needless to say there is no medical doctor’s endorsement found a... ... REFERENCES Astrup, Arne. â€Å"Dietary Approaches to Reducing Body Weight.† Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Ed. Jeff P. Holly. New York: AMA 1999. 109-120. Berstein RS; Thornton JC; Yang MU; Wang J; Redmond AM; Pierson RN Jr; Pi-Sunyer FX; Van Itallie TB. (1983a). Prediction of the Resting Metabolic Rate in obese patients. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1983 Apr, 37(4): 595-602. Brannon, Linda and Jess Feist. Health Psychology: An Introduction to Behavior and Health. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000. Westerterp-Plantega MS; Rolland V; Wilson SA; Westerterp KR. (1999a). Satiety related to 24 h diet-induced thermogenesis during high protein/carbohydrate vs high fat diets measured in a respiration chamber. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999 June; 53(6): 495-503.