According to a 1996 survey of more than 100,000 American adults, 34.9% of the men and 40.0% of the women were trying to lose weight by consuming less fat.[1] More recently it has been estimated that 40% of American consumers are watching their carbohydrate consumption.[2] Despite the low-fat-vs-low-carb controversy (which dates back at least 180 years when Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French attorney, warned consumers of high-carbohydrate diets that they would "die in your own melted grease"), there is still no compelling evidence that dieting by itself produces permanent weight loss. Rather, the ongoing debates serve only to distract the ever-increasing population of overweight Americans from making the changes that could result in permanent weight loss, or at least a reduction in the rate of weight gain.
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The article appears in Medscape General Medicine, "On the Futility of Dieting"
Posted 11/01/2005, by Edward Abramson, PhD.