Fad diet

A fad diet or diet cult is a diet that makes promises of weight loss or other health advantages such as longer life without backing by solid science, and in many cases are characterized by highly restrictive or unusual food choices. Celebrity endorsements are frequently associated with fad diets, and the individuals who develop and promote these programs often profit handsomely.

A competitive market for "healthy diets" arose in the nineteenth century developed world, as migration and industrialization and commodification of food supplies began eroding adherence to traditional ethnocultural diets, and the health consequences of pleasure-based diets were becoming apparent. As Matt Fitzgerald describes it, "This modern cult of healthy eating is made up of innumerable sub-cults that are constantly vying for superiority. ...Like consumer products in commercial markets, each of these diets has a brand name and is advertised as being better than competing brands. The recruiting programs of the healthy-diet cults consist almost entirely of efforts to convince prospective followers that their diet is the One True Way to eat for maximum physical health.... The specific cult whose "science"-backed schtick a person finds most convincing usually depends on his or her identity biases."

These diets are generally restrictive, and are characterized by promises of fast weight loss or great physical health, and which are not grounded in sound science.

Such diets are often endorsed by celebrities or medical professionals who style themselves as "gurus" and profit from sales of branded products, books, and public speaking.

These diets attract people who want to lose weight quickly and easily and keep that weight off or who want to be healthy and find that belonging to a group of people defined by a strict way of eating helps them to avoid the many bad food choices available in the developed world.

Most people (as high as 98% in some descriptions) of people who diet using these diets in order to lose weight gain it back within 5 years; fad diets fail because many of them are not sustainable, and people revert to former eating habits when the diet fails.

Fad diets may be based completely on pseudoscience (e.g. "magical fat-burning" foods or notions of vitalism); most fad diets are marketed or described with exaggerated claims, not sustainable in sound science, about the benefits of eating a certain way or the harms of eating other ways.

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