The Miraculous Claims of the Zone Diet

by Iulia Pascanu

One way of recognizing a fad diet is said to be the promise of multiple miraculous effects upon health. And Zone diet promises a lot.

"Why is the Zone diet so controversial?"

"Beats me!"

Extract from an interview with Dr. Barry Sears, by Harper&Collins Publishers

Five cover promises

At first glance, Barry Sears' first published book "Enter The Zone" has the following main points:

Lose weight permanently
Reset your genetic code
Prevent disease
Achieve your maximum physical performance
Enhance your mental productivity

These five statements should make us buy. I think I would buy if only one of them were true, point three, preventing disease.

How can a diet not be controversial when it says it can "prevent diseases"? But, to be fair, Dr Sears provides further details of his ambiguous statement somewhere between the covers of the bestseller. We find out that Zone diet can help to:

prevent type II diabetes, as Zone diet is nothing more than permanent and accurate insulin control through food we ingest
prevent cardiovascular diseases (cardiomyopathy, arthritis, artherosclerosis, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia)
prevent or cure "mental diseases" such as depression and alcoholism
restore energy in conditions such as CMS, PMS or even HIV infections
prevent cancer development and make antibodies fight tumors with greater success.

I really want to believe Zone can be that magic recipe that can help me live a longer and healthier life, without too much effort. But I expected some scientific proof for all these promises. And what did I find instead? Some stories about people who successfully solved their problems by following Zone diet, and their everlasting gratitude to diet guru Barry Sears! I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that.

Of course, there are some good aspects of the Zone diet. It promotes healthy eating standards and gives some common-sense advice. Somewhere, on the publishing road (more precisely with "Omega RX Zone --- The miracle of high-dose fish oil"), Dr. Sears advises us not to make any radical change in our dietary program without consulting a trained physician.

But I think there are still many things that need to be proven in the Zone. If it really does work the way it promises, mankind should go beyond such problems as illness.

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