Top Nutritionists Select Best Eating Plans

In an evaluation of 20 diet or eating plans, conducted by U.S. News and World Report, the top two overall were the:

#1 DASH Diet, and

#2 Mediterranean Diet.

Both of these are long term eating plans, rather than diets to go on and off. That’s a big plus.

If you’re not sure why, read last week’s post: Restrictive Diets Don’t Work; Healthy Eating Does.

The U.S. News expert panel included 22 nutritionists and medical specialists in various fields from cardiology to diabetes to pediatrics.

The team spent six months researching the diets in medical journals, government reports, and elsewhere. They created a profile for each diet explaining its rationale and whether its claims are met, along with any potential health risks and whether dieters find it doable over time.

The profiles were then used to rate each diet on a scale of 1 to 5 for:

• Short-term weight loss,
• Long-term weight loss,
• How easy it is to follow,
• Its nutritional completeness,
• Its safety,
• Its ability to prevent or manage diabetes, and
• Its ability to prevent or manage heart disease.

The panel decided they could not assign scores to exercise noting, “Exercise gets serious attention in some diets and lip service in others, but the primary focus of a diet, after all, is food. Whether to exercise, how, and how much is a lifestyle decision beyond the scope of a mere diet."

If you feel you need a real diet to jumpstart some weight loss, the top two weight-loss diets were:

#1 Weight Watchers, and

#2 Jenny Craig.

You can read the full U.S. News Best Diets Report here.

Tags: cravings, enjoy your food, holiday diet tips, avoid holiday weight gain, eat healthy for life