Top 10 Diet Fads of the 2000’s

Remember your 2003 New Year’s Resolutions? Odds are it included one of these extreme weight loss fads.

1. The Atkins Diet

Dr. Robert Atkins became a worldwide celebrity in 2003 for his eponymous diet preaching the power of high-fat/protein diets. Also known as the Low Carb Diet, the Atkins Diet became so popular in the United States that it even may have led to the bankruptcy of pasta companies.

2. The South Beach Diet

Based on the Glycemic Index, this diet doesn’t cut all carbohydrates, just the ‘bad’ ones. A diet once popular only among diabetics and others hoping to control blood sugar, the ‘South Beach’ branding helped take this diet mainstream.

3. The Juice Cleanse Diet

Juice cleanses are sold as a way to jumpstart a diet by detoxifying the body over several days or weeks. However, this type of cleanse also deprives the body of nutrients and no clinical trials have proven the efficacy of these diet programs for detoxification.

4. The Hollywood Diet

It seemed like every supermarket and drugstore in the 2000’s had a Hollywood Diet display front and center. With its high price tags and low calorie content (400 calories/day), the Hollywood Diet induced rapid highs and crashes worthy of its name.

5. The Nutrisystem Diet

Nutrisystem uses pre-prepared meals as a method of controlling food intake and hunger. While such a rigid structure has been shown to be effective in targeted clinical trials, it is often criticized as a short-term solution that fails to teach dieters the tools needed for sustained maintenance of weight loss.

6. The Grapefruit Diet

According to Grapefruit Diet proponents, eating half a grapefruit every meal provides key fat-burning enzymes, helping to supplement a low-carb, high-fat/protein regimen like the Atkins Diet. However, grapefruit diets have never been proven effective by independent clinical trials, and can actually create harmful drug interactions too.

7. The Lemonade Diet

This diet includes 0% food, forcing dieters to subsist solely on a constant supply of lemonade, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper to lose weight and cleanse the body. As expected, this diet comes with a serious list of side effects, including nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fainting, and decreased metabolism.

8. The Raw Food Diet

100% self explanatory. ’Raw Foodism’ has a devoted community of followers that treat their raw food diets as a philosophy and way of life. Proponents have included everyone from fruitarians like Steve Jobs to Paleolithic dieters like Megan Fox.

9. The Cookie Diet

It sounds like a creation of The Onion, but this diet is real and ‘doctor approved’. A preschooler’s dream; a dietician’s (and dentist’s) nightmare.

10. The Raspberry Ketone Diet

The Raspberry Ketone Diet uses a chemical extract of red raspberries, called raspberry ketone, that is advertised as a tool to promote significant weight loss and fight obesity.

However, the Raspberry Ketone Diet's popularity stems almost entirely from anecdotal evidence and media publicity. Clinical trial data found weight loss of less than 2% in two animal studies using rodents, and no scientific study has ever proven Raspberry Ketone is effective for weight loss in humans.

The Future of Health Fads

Why is it so hard to follow the simple advice of doctors and dieticians? We would rather try silly fads and dangerous pills even when we know diet and exercise is the best long-term path to healthy weight loss. Boring, I know.

If these crazy fads are any indication, we're only months away from hearing about the best-selling Gummy Vitamins Diet.