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Fad Diets: Hype or Hope?

  • Gastroenterology, Critical Care, and Lifestyle Medicine (SA McClave, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Obesity continues to be a growing concern globally due to association with a number of comorbidities and contributing significantly to increase in health care expenditures. Despite availability of a number of treatment modalities, lifestyle modification with dietary modification and exercise continues to be the foundation. However, the standard model of lifestyle modification is not efficacious or sustainable for many patients leading them to seek alternative approaches. We conducted a comprehensive literature review to present the data regarding efficacy and sustainability of many common dietary approaches.

Recent Findings

Building upon previous work, recent randomized controlled trials have compared many popular diets head to head in varying patient populations. Along with the weight changes, studies have investigated the changes in metabolic parameters, inflammatory markers, and cardiac risk factor reduction.

Summary

Though the studies do not show superiority of one diet compared to the other, the preventive benefits and other favorable metabolic changes of the diets make them worthy of consideration.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism, and Nutrition, Mayo Clinic, 200 1st Street SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA

    Aravind R. Kuchkuntla, Ryan T. Hurt & Manpreet S. Mundi

  2. Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Berkeley Limketkai

  3. Division of General Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Sanjeev Nanda & Ryan T. Hurt

Authors
  1. Aravind R. Kuchkuntla
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  2. Berkeley Limketkai
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  3. Sanjeev Nanda
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  4. Ryan T. Hurt
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  5. Manpreet S. Mundi
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Contributions

Manpreet Mundi and Ryan Hurt formulated an outline of the manuscript. Aravind Kuchkuntla created the first draft. Manpreet Mundi, Berkeley Limketkai, Sanjeev Nanda, and Ryan Hurt critically revised the manuscript. All authors agree to be responsible for its content.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manpreet S. Mundi.

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Conflict of Interest

Aravind R. Kuchkuntla declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Berkeley Limketkai declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Sanjeev Nanda declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ryan T. Hurt has served as a consultant for Nestlé.

Manpreet S. Mundi declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Gastroenterology, Critical Care, and Lifestyle Medicine

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Kuchkuntla, A.R., Limketkai, B., Nanda, S. et al. Fad Diets: Hype or Hope?. Curr Nutr Rep 7, 310–323 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-018-0242-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-018-0242-1

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