Steaking it all on meat
THIS year has been a whirlwind of crazy diets – the Sleeping Beauty Diet, the Grandma Diet and the Love Diet – making it seem like everyone is trying everything in the name of weight loss.
But just when we couldn’t think of anything more absurd, a man is now pushing the steak and burger diet.
It sounds like a meat lover’s dream to flip the traditional food pyramid and eliminate fruit and vegies entirely.
After reading Gary Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories, New Yorker Travis Statham started eating a keto diet and shed 7kg from his initial 79kg. However, after six years of limiting his diet to protein and vegetables, he decided vegetables were irrelevant when it came to satiating his hunger. Enter the beef and burger fest.
“I had been cooking ... lots of steaks and burgers, but then I’d add a salad, or I’d try to add broccoli,” he explains.
“I never quite understood why vegetables were good for me.”
Now Statham skips breakfast, lunch is a burger patty and dinner is a 680g piece of steak. The only plant-based food he consumes comes from his daily coffee, he says he has never felt better and it’s helped him maintain his preferred 70kg.
Okay, it does sound like he’d be saving a tonne of money not splurging his month’s pay on avo on toast and organic $20 kale salads, but still, can cutting out all sources of veg and fruit actually be healthy?
According to dietitian Chloe McLeod, it’s a big fat meaty no. “This type of diet is not something I’d recommend. High intakes of red meat are linked with a number of health conditions, most notably a higher incidence of bowel cancer.”
According to healthline, just 100g of lean beef contains an abundance of Vitamin B12, iron, zinc and selenium, and is rich in creatine and carnosine – two nutrients that help maintain healthy muscle and brain function.
To add to this, McLeod also notes the steak and burger diet will wreak havoc on your gut.
“Low fibre from lack of vegetables and wholegrains is likely to have a poor impact on gut health as well, due to changing types of bacteria in the gut.”
But if Statham claims the diet has helped him lose weight and keep it off, it must be beneficial in some way, right? Again, no. It all comes down to his overall calorie intake.
“For anyone, if they reduce caloric intake to less than their daily needs, weight loss will usually occur, regardless of where calories are coming from. This doesn’t make it healthy.” www.bodyandsoul.com.au