Even though all diets work if you follow them (and that’s a big IF), choosing the right plan, a healthy plan that is sustainable (as in for life) proves, for many of us, to be an overwhelming task.
There’s too much exploring, investigating, thinking and planning involved for people who are as busy as we are; too much work. Right? We’ve got better things to do with our time than concern ourselves with the insignificant details of our health.
We prefer mindless dieting to mindful eating.
We want someone to tell us what to do. Serve up a simple plan, if you will. We intellectually understand that there is no ‘magic bullet,’ but we still cling to the hope that there is one. And, so we are willing to entertain yet another fad diet.
Enter the picture, Tracy Anderson, fitness trainer to the ‘stars,’ like Madonna (well – until she fired her) and Gwyneth Paltrow, with her “Baby Food Diet.”
Basically, the baby food diet consists of 14 portions of puréed food, followed by a healthy dinner daily. The big plus (if you want to consider it a plus) is that the baby food diet is a no-brainer. You stock up on baby food and eliminate the need to plan, weigh, measure, or think.
The negatives are numerous. Baby food, while relatively additive-free and fortified with nutrients is not engineered for adults. At the end of the day, you might find that you are not only lacking the proper nutrients, but that your daily calorie count is under 1,200 calories a day, which can backfire. Your metabolism can slow down and, in turn, trigger your body to store the calories that you are eating as fat.
For more information about the nutritional value of baby food and their thoughts on the Baby Food Diet, I turned to the Gerber people that proved interesting. Here’s what they have to say.
Chew on This!
“Nestlé Infant Nutrition/Gerber Products Company is aware of the current “Baby Food Diet,” and while consuming pureed fruits and vegetables can contribute toward the recommended intakes of fruits and vegetables, Gerber does not promote the use of pureed baby foods for weight loss purposes. . . . . ”
Gerber also points out that . . . . “Foods for young children might seem like ‘mush’ to an adult. But adults have a full set of teeth and years of experience feeding themselves! The textures, flavors and shapes we incorporate into the products are carefully matched to feeding developmental cues. When we create new products we’re thinking about things such as children’s ability to maneuver their tongue, mash foods with their jaws, self-feed with fingers, use utensils, bite through harder textures, and much more. Young children have a lot of oral and motor skills to master before they are ready for the more advanced tastes and textures of “adult” foods!
There you have it. In addition to possibly not getting the proper nutrients, or ingesting enough calories, you aren’t using your teeth. You do want to maneuver your tongue, mash foods with your jaw, and use your motor skills, don’t you?
Spread the word … NOT the icing!
Janice
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