I was just reading a thread about the possible dangers of Splenda. A couple of days ago I read about how pizza manufacturers now feel they have to make low-carb pizzas in order to avoid losing money on the low-carb trend. To be honest, I'm beginning to worry.

I see very few people in here being honest and saying "I got fat because I ate the wrong things and didn't exercise enough." However, I do see a lot of people blaming the low-fat trend of the past couple of decades for their weight gain. To an extent they may be right. There was a great emphasis on cutting the fat out of ones diet, but let's be honest - we were also told to watch the calories, and if we had actually eaten less calories than we had spent, we would have lost weight. That's a fact, and in that sense, the "experts" were right. However, many people found the low-fat diet impossible to stick to because it left them hungry and they were bored with the choices.

Then came the low-fat options. Finally we could have our cake and eat it too! Manufacturers were able to turn just about anything into a "light" version. Problem was, to disguise the inferior taste caused by the lack of fat, they added sugar and all sorts of other bad things to their products, so the calorie count stayed the same, but we started eating more because it said "diet" or "light" on the pack. The result - well, we just have to look at ourselves and each other to see what happened.

Then low-carbing really kicked in. People discovered that if they ate more protein and fat but cut out the carbs, they felt less hungry, and they were more likely to stick to the diet, so all of a sudden, they started losing weight - lots of weight! And they didn't even have to count calories or fat grams. Sure, whether or not it's really good for you is still up for debate, but people are getting healthier just by losing the extra pounds.

But look what's happening now. We are beginning to make the same mistakes as last time. Low-carb bread, low-carb pizzas, low-carb substitutes for all sorts of things are coming out everywhere, highly processed and very tempting for the people who miss all their old favourites.

One (1) of the reasons why low-carbing works is that you cut certain things out of your diet. For instance, you stop eating potatoes. Now, nothing low-carb really resembles potatoes, so you decide to have some more veggies with your steak instead. Less calories, good fibre count - weightloss. But now imagine that someone invents a low-carb potato substitute. It has the same texture as a potato, you can bake it like a potato, maybe it doesn't quite have the same taste as the real thing, but that's easily disguised with a big dollop of butter. Oh yes, and whatever they made the low-carb potato of is packed with calories, but we don't need to count those, do we? Now all of a sudden you've got a great meal, and you're safe in the knowledge that the carb count is minimal.

Can you see what I'm getting at? With all these substitutes, I think we're about to make the same mistakes as we did with low-fat. Like the vegetarians who buy "I can't believe it's not meat" products, we still want our old favourites. And we still haven't learnt portion control, so instead of treating ourselves to one slice of real pizza once in a while, we now go out and buy a big fat fake pizza - no scratch that, we'll have Domino's deliver it straight to our door every Friday - and expect to keep losing weight!

There still is no easy way. We still have to use moderation, variation and exercise, or we'll never succeed. Otherwise we'll all meet again in 10 years on a forum for yet another new Way Of Eating, lamenting how we were misled by the low-carb "experts".

Let the discussion commence!