The Times
London, UK
6 January, 2007



Global diet books are the latest slimming phenomenon, but which will work for you? Caroline Stacey looks between the covers


If only we could eat like fishermen, peasants, tropical islanders or our ancestors — then we wouldn’t be fat. That’s the theory behind diet books that promise to return us to a state of innocence, where second helpings, Pringles and Quality Street are unheard of. Every year another exotic example of a group of people whose diet we could learn from joins the pile. We’ve had the Eskimo d iet, the Mediterranean diet, the secrets of svelte French women and this year, the follow-up to Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat. But are they any good? Is it really healthy to adopt the eating habits of the Arctic or Tokyo or 10,000 years ago?

THE FRENCH WOMAN’S DIET
The theory
In French Women Don’t Get Fat, followed last year by French Women for All Seasons, the New York-based expat Mireille Guiliano reveals how French women stay svelte while allegedly allowing themselves chocolate, bread and wine. But she’s talking about only one tiny square of dark chocolate or sliver of baguette. So they just scoff smaller portions and booze less than us. While abstinence might come naturally to the French, the rest of us will have to weigh out the measly 65g of muesli she suggests for breakfast. Statistics suggest that French women do eat better than we do: they have the second lowest body-mass index in Europe and eat more than the recommended quantity of fruit and veg.
Go for it
Drink lots of water, eat plenty of fruit. Make your own yoghurt, never snack between meals. Identify offending foods for which you have a weakness, such as chips or ice cream, and drastically limit the amount you allow yourself. Eat three proper meals a day, slowly and with relish, and keep portion sizes down.
Get real
Though it claims to be about pleasure rather than denial, the reprogramming starts with a food diary and a detox leek soup recipe. Minute amounts of bread, chocolate and wine aren’t every woman’s idea of an indulgence. Requires relentless self-control. To control their appetite many French women smoke and the incidence of lung cancer is higher than the European average and increasing.
French Women Don’t Get Fat and French Women for All Seasons by Mireille Guiliano (Chatto & Windus)

THE JAPANESE DIET
The theory
In Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat Naomi Moiyama shamelessly got one up on French women. Japanese women are among the world’s healthiest — only 3 per cent are obese — and live longer than anyone else. They look younger too, claims the author. The follow-up, The Japan Diet, published this week, is a 30-day programme for losing weight with the usual odds and ends of charts, lists, tips, statements of the obvious and recipes. All heavily diluted, as in the seven top tips on healthy beverages. The first tip is to drink six to eight glasses of water; the second: drink plenty of water. Without making rash weight-loss claims the diet makes sense. The Japanese consume on average 26 per cent fat, compared with 34 per cent fat in the American diet, and eat 1,000 fewer calories a day. Sixty per cent of their daily calories come from carbs, of which rice accounts for half.
Go for it
A low-calorie, plant-based diet. More vegetables, more fish, less sugar. Smaller portions, fewer calories, less fat, filling miso soup with most meals. Tofu. Rice, preferably brown. Breakfast on miso soup with tofu and spring onions. Or turn to the cheat’s chapter of seven days of supermarket ready-meals.
Get real
You don’t need to be told that a dinner of Waitrose’s Perfectly Balanced lasagne, salad with lemon juice and two kiwi fruits can form part of a healthy eating plan. Too much salt in the Japanese diet leads to high blood pressure, stroke and stomach cancer.
Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat and The Japan Diet by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle (Vermilion)

THE STONE AGE DIET
The theory
We are genetically more suited to the wild meat, raw veg and berries that our hunter-gatherer ancestors survived on than the agricultural produce that makes up the modern diet. Academics have studied what we ate 10,000 years ago and the diets of remaining hunter-gatherer tribes and discovered that there is no heart disease, obesity, diabetes or high cholesterol in these societies.
This is a low-carb, high-protein diet but, unlike the Atkins diet, low in fat. Meat from bison and deer and fish is less fatty and higher in omega-3 oils than that of farm animals and can help to reduce cholesterol. Become healthier the caveman way with recipes such as buffalo burgers and cauliflower salad that won’t make a modern alpha male feel like a wimp, especially not with the suggested 2,200 calories. Lean protein reduces the appetite and speeds up the metabolism, which can help you to lose up to 15lb (7kg) over six months. All made respectable with a huge bibliography.
Go for it
Lots of fish and lean meat. Some 55 per cent of calories should come from protein, the rest from fruit, vegetables, nuts and oils. No dairy, cereals or pulses, not to mention refined sugars, fatty meats or processed salty foods. Sample breakfast: omelette stuffed with crab and avocado with peach salsa. Get real
No carbs for the rest of your life? Far more protein than we need. Our ancestors may have been lean, fit and free from heart disease, but they didn’t live long enough to develop chronic diseases; the life expectancy of a Paleolithic hunter gatherer was 33 years for men and 28 for women. Recent evidence suggests that the Neanderthals struggled to find enough to eat and resorted to cannibalism.
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain (John Wiley & Sons) and Neanderthin by Ray Audette (St Martin’s Press)

THE ESKIMO DIET
The theory
The Inuit survived on a no-carb diet for thousands of years. Living off seal, whale, salmon, a few berries and the partly digested contents of animal stomachs (yum!), they didn’t suffer from obesity, coronary heart disease or diabetes. When the omega-3 pioneer Professor Hugh Sinclair put himself on a diet of minced seal and whale blubber in the 1940s he lost weight, despite eating more than 1lb of fat a day. Research suggests that regularly eating oily fish or taking fish oil supplements (the best source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids) cuts the risk of heart disease, so two hospital doctors from Sheffield wrote The Eskimo Diet in 1990 as guidance for avoiding heart attacks. Though not meant for weight loss, they claim that pounds are bound to fall off too — probably because you eat less and ditch the biscuits — as with any diet.
Go for it
Thankfully, stomach contents aren’t on the menu. But oily fish is, at least twice a week, plus fish oil supplements. Replace saturated fat such as butter, with polyunsaturates and monounsaturates such as olive oil; cut down on alcohol and sugar. Get more fibre from fruit and veg, switch to lean meat and low-fat dairy.
Get real
Although better balanced than a real Inuit diet, it is short on vegetables. Dishes such as chicken salad with cottage cheese and almonds are drab. Recent research has raised doubts about whether fish oil reduces the risk of dying from heart disease or stroke, although official advice is that we should all eat oily fish regularly. Lethal incidents involving polar bears, childbirth and infectious diseases meant that Inuits didn’t live long enough to benefit from their healthy diet. And the lack of fibre in their diet could have led to bowel cancer.
The Eskimo Diet and The Eskimo Diet Cook Book by Dr Reg Saynor and Dr Frank Ryan (Watermark Press)

THE GREEK DOCTOR’S DIET
The theory Lose 2lb to 3lb a week sticking to this variation on the low-carb idea, which claims to be a more natural way of eating. The GI (glycaemic index) rates foods according to the speed with which they release sugar into the bloodstream. Cut out carbs such as white bread, baked potatoes and rice, and replace them with healthy alternatives such as lentils and beans. Eat more fruit, vegetables, berries and nuts. Reduce the amount of meat and dairy, and thus saturated fats, and get protein from other sources: fish, vegetables or pulses instead.
Most meals will be a third protein and two thirds low GI carbs. It’s a bit technical and rather indigestibly written. Most controversial assertion: 80 per cent of the world’s population is lactose intolerant.
Go for it
This diet, invented by a Greek doctor based in Norway, is huge in Scandinavia. Eat little and often. Lots of low-GI foods, three salads or vegetables a day, no more than two pieces of fruit, only wholegrain bread, protein-rich food with every meal. Squeeze lemon on everything as Greeks do. But baklava doesn’t enter the picture. About 2,000 calories a day.
Get real
An uncontroversial, appetising Mediterranean diet dressed up with GI-speak and a lot of nutritional science. But bear in mind that today’s Greek diet isn’t as healthy as it used to be. The life expectancy of Greek women is below the European average, almost half of all Greeks die of cardiovascular disease, and 28 per cent of Greek men and 30 per cent of women are obese compared with 21 per cent of men in England and 23 per cent of women.
The Greek Doctor’s Diet by Fedon Alexander Lindberg (Rodale)

THE HAWAII DIET
The theory
The supermodel Marie Helvin was not typical. About 64 per cent of her fellow Hawaiians are overweight. Dr Terry Shintani, of the University of Hawaii, was so concerned about public health that he came up with a system modelled on traditional Hawaiian foods. These include taro root, sweet potatoes, yams and breadfruit, which are filling rather than fattening. Made up of 78 per cent carbohydrates, 10 per cent fat and 12 per cent protein, food in the Hawaii Diet should be fresh, seasonal, local. Most protein should come from vegetables and fat is limited. His programme claims that you can eat all the food you want, not feel hungry and still lose an average of 11 lb in three weeks.
Go for it
More or less vegan and based on generous heaps of bulky unrefined carbs. Four to six cupfuls of corn, potatoes, brown rice, barley, buckwheat or oatmeal, three to five portions of veg, two to four portions of fruit, two to three portions of leafy vegetables, two to three portions of beans or tofu. That’s 2,500 calories a day. No dairy. Not a lot of pineapple.
Get real
No wonder there’s a warning about initial bloating. You can eat all you want as long as what you want is starch. A high carb, low-fat diet devised for Americans who feel deprived if their plates aren’t overflowing.
The Hawaii Diet by Terry Shintani (Health Foundation Press)

THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET
The theory
Few people have a bad word for the Mediterranean diet. For half a century it’s been known that a diet based on fruit and vegetables, fish, whole grains, pulses, occasional meat and small amounts of dairy, washed down with red wine, is healthy. It’s 60 per cent carbs, 30 per cent fat, mostly monounsaturated fats from olive oil, and 10 per cent protein. This combination is credited with low rates of heart disease, low cholesterol and possibly reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s. Follow this diet and you should be able to lose 1lb to 2lb a week. There are no tricks, but all the other diet-book edicts apply: savour food, control portion size, drink water and exercise.
Go for it
Gazpacho, ratatouille, seafood risotto, whole-wheat pasta, pulses, fish, small amounts of dairy, masses of fresh fruit. Lay off the ice cream, cheese and pizza; and don’t think that because a modicum of red wine is good for you a bottle of Vin de Pays d’Oc a day is OK.
Get real
Italy has the highest percentage of obese children in Europe; 35 per cent of 7 to 11-year-old Italians are overweight, with children from Malta, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Croatia, all Mediterranean countries, next.
The Mediterranean Diet, by Marissa Cloutier and Eve Adamson (HarperCollins)




http://women.timesonline.co.uk/arti...2531692,00.html