A constant diet of food fads

Itried a fat bomb today. Heard of it? Neither had I, and I wish I hadn’t. If you have heard of them you’ve probably also heard of ‘‘‘five and two’’, ‘‘eating windows’’ or ‘‘intermittent fasting’’. discovered them all as I journeyed down the mystical world of modern-day diets. And I swear I heard the cash registers ringing.

Everyone seems to be talking about food and how to eat it. At the hairdresser, lunching with a friend, around the family dinner table, in magazines, and online.

Has it always been like that?

I recall years ago people looking down their noses at us when we lobbed butter on our potatoes. Fat wasn’t in vogue then.

Now fat is back – we know that because products like Lewis Road butter have pride of place in every trendy fridge.

Then salt was the bad guy – it was supposed to harden your arteries and cause a heart attack. Then rock and Himalayan pink salt promised the Earth’s minerals with one shake and it was cool again.

Then we all freaked out about sugar when, really, they just shouldn’t have invented those lousy energy drinks and left us ordinary folk alone with our brown sugar and Weet-Bix.

Now carbs are out of vogue.

I admit I did once fall prey to the grapefruit and boiled egg diet. It was the end of boiled eggs for me forever.

Every day I hear about fasting, low or no carb, or no dairy, or much dairy or much fat. These diets don’t get cool by chance. They’re part of powerful marketing campaigns using supposedly credible research to infuse into our lives so we’re all spurting out words like ketogenic, Atkins, pegan or paleo.

Every shot of an unachievable body starts to lure us into irrational hope. Despite all rational thought we see the ‘‘before and after’’ pictures and next minute we’re gagging for that new body.

Diet marketers have got it easy. We’re all interested in food and, while trends change frequently, the desire to look in shape doesn’t.

I have always cursed British model Twiggy for starting the ‘‘skinny is beautiful’’ wave. Personally, I’m all for the renaissance woman, celebrated for looking like she enjoyed a good bit of butter on her spud.

Then the Kardashians brought in the new bodybeautiful trend of big butts and breasts.

But this look is way more challenging. You have to look insanely fit, which means maniacal workouts which, of course, deplete your breasts and butt which are mostly made up of fat, so to complete the look you have to get implants.

Therefore, the bank balances of the fitness industry go ka-ching, the diet industry tills go ka-ching and now the plastic surgeons are ka-chinging like never before.

I’m not saying we don’t have a problem. The New Zealand Health Survey last year found about one-third of us are obese.

But while we’re expanding exponentially, the $72.7 billion diet industry is growing steadily at 3 per cent a year.

And they’re almost guaranteed return customers because, depending on what figures you read, more than two-thirds of dieters put the weight back on. So, you go through this cycle of try, achieve, fail, while feeding a booming industry.

On the sunny side the industry claims it is saving us all through good nutrition. On the dark, it’s continuing to lure us into the promise of a magic pill.

The reality is there’s only one real answer and I offer this at no cost: a lifetime of healthy living, eating moderately and exercising more. But there’s no fun marketing that.