It’s an interesting thing that so little of my actual experience revolves around “fad” diets. With a title like Dietitian you’d think there would at least be some course or seminar somewhere in my career that broke it all down.
It’s the opposite in fact, I could probably count the number of fad diets mentioned in a medical setting on one hand. Step out into mainstream nutrition and suddenly everything is “diet this” and “diet that”. So over time I’ve drawn out a structure of diets in my head.
Last post on the Keto Diet I mentioned how that diet way back in the early 1900’s was the first “diet” like we know them today. Now I want to show you how that diet spawned an entire century of new diets. Take a look at the StarvingRD History of Diets.
Feel free to click in for a closer look. To be honest I was surprised how picturesque the whole flow turned out. You can see below each diet the year it was developed and in some cases the ratio of Carbs to Fat to Protein. You might even notice how the original Keto Diet evolved using principles from the Atkins and Dukan Diet, leading to the Modified Atkins Diet (aka Keto as we know it today).
Unfortunately although the chart I made had clickable links wordpress won’t let me post that version. I will however post links down below if you want to learn some more, I’ll be drilling down into the chart as time goes on. There are thousands of other diets out there which is why I only chose ones that have had a major impact in the U.S. or influenced future diets.
Maybe I’m weird, but my analytical side loves seeing data come together to make sense of something as messy as 20th century diets. Hopefully you all like it too!
Be good to each other.
– Joshua Iufer, RD
TLC 3 Diet (atp III)
Starving Dietitian 