Why we keep falling for fad diets that don’t work | Five questions
Fad diets never work. So why do we keep trying them?
We’ve all seen the promos, and it’s a safe bet that most of us have been tempted.
“Lose 20 pounds in two weeks!” “Eat what you want and shed the weight!”
Janet Chrzan is intrigued. Why do so many people fall for this?
Chrzan describes herself as a “nutritional anthropologist.” An adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, she teaches public health nutrition in the School of Nursing. Her focus is on how our social worlds influence what we eat, and how that affects our health.
She recently teamed up with Kima Cargill, a psychology professor at the University of Washington-Tacoma, to write Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets.
We spoke to Chrzan recently.
What is a “fad diet?”
The definition we use in the book comes from Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, which says fad diets have seven points:
They ask the user to eliminate one or several food groups.
They promise quick results, such as losing five pounds a week.
They use personal testimonies as proof of effectiveness.
They use only certain or special foods that claim to offer advantages for weight loss.
They usually recommend supplements or pills as part of the diet.
They are endorsed or advertised by a celebrity.
And, finally, they sound too good to be true.
Other researchers have argued that it’s simpler: Fad diets tend to make improbable claims about efficacy, and they ask you to change your food rituals.
My own personal take: We notice that they almost always ask you to buy something special, such as switching out a normal food for a specialized food that is almost always more expensive. Or purchasing a book, or a plan, or access to some sort of diet guru.
What fad diets are not, which is also important, is that they are not diets that have historic or cultural longevity, but that might come in and out of fashion. The Mediterranean diet is not a fad diet, for example. It has a significant amount of historical precedence. Going kosher is not a fad diet. Vegetarianism is not a fad diet, although people may adopt it as a fad.
What is the allure of a fad diet and why do we succumb?
Primarily, because they promise that efficacy. It might sound too good to be true, but we put our higher functions on hold and say, “yes, it would be great if I could lose five pounds a week.”
Fad diets are about the power of wishful thinking. In fact, we were going to call this book Magic Beans. People believe in these diets because they promise something that generally doesn’t require a lot of effort, or so it seems, for an enlarged payout.
These diets also get disseminated socially. Someone we know tells us they went on the diet and it was great. Or we follow a celebrity and we think what she says is phenomenal, so we want to go on her diet.
Most important, fad diets make sense culturally. They adopt narratives that are already considered acceptable and normal. For instance, many people in America believe that sugar and carbohydrates are bad. That has overtaken the idea that fat is bad. No fad diet is going to come forward at this point and say, “don’t eat protein, it’s bad for you.” Here in America, we believe in the primacy of protein.
These diets also piggyback on each other. Atkins has been recycled into Keto. The Whole30 diet simply takes out everything that Atkins and Clean, another diet, wants you to avoid. So once someone has gone on one of these diets, the others start making sense. They reiterate each other.
But alas, they don’t work?
They don’t work because while they make cultural sense, they don’t make social sense. They are very, very hard to maintain socially. Think about going out to lunch with someone on, say, a diet that removes fat or carbs. They can’t eat very much. It’s hard to have a social lunch with them.
These diets are very focused on control — certain foods, certain portions. You can do it for a short period of time. But it’s hard to sustain. Say you’re on the Clean diet — only certain kinds of organic food — and then you go to a holiday dinner at your granny’s house. Are you going to tell her you’re not going to eat her pie because she doesn’t know if it’s organic?
If they don’t work, why do we keep coming back to them?
In talking with people, what I hear is that if the diet didn’t work, they feel they’ve failed, not the diet. It’s not the diet’s fault. And because there’s often a monetary investment — sometimes a rather large one — they have what I call “skin in the game.” It’s really hard to walk away.
Also, these diets aren’t about the food. They’re about identity. About control. About a whole bunch of other things. People won’t say, “I’m following a paleo diet.” They’ll say, “I’m paleo.” These are powerful statements about being.
From an anthropological point of view, these diets are about health, identity, social performance and transformation. They have power because we believe they will fulfill our desires for self-improvement. They often signal class status. They can even signal political identities. Although they often appeal across the board, some appeal to particular groups of people because of how they have been advertised or talked about.
Paleo and Keto became very big with bodybuilders. They also have become a cornerstone of the male supremacy movement. Among some of these male supremacy advocates, one of the ways you show you are a dominant male is by being an obvious carnivore. In their view, men who are powerful eat meat, and the fact that they eat meat demonstrates their right to be in control of other people.
What does all this say about us as a culture?
One reason Americans are uniquely interested in fad diets is that we have this history of transformation connected with consumerism. We have this idea that you can purchase things that will improve your life in very important ways.
Say you’re swapping out something someone thinks is bad for you, like wheat flour, and instead you’re going to have almond flour. That is much more expensive. But for some, that is one reason the diet makes sense. If it’s expensive, it must work.
Often, the time cost is very expensive, too. So some of these diets are really only available to the upper-middle classes. They’re aspirational.
The main question is that we know what allows you to lose weight. It’s eating less food. In nutrition, we recommend that people reduce their daily caloric intake slowly. If you remove 20% of food from your plate, you’ll lose weight slowly without sacrificing health. Over time, you will get to your target weight. What this really comes down to is why do we have such a hard time embracing moderation?