When I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is overweight but unwilling to put in any sort of real work as far as fitness is concerned, he told me about a new diet he was thinking of trying. At first I thought he was joking because this dude is always messing with people and he will go on for an hour about something that he is completely making up with a deadpan serious look on his face.
However, in this situation my friend was not joking. He is seriously going to buy a crap-ton of baby food jars and eat that exclusively for meals. Any bets on how long he makes it?
src
I have tried baby food at points in my life and not just when I was a baby. Some of that stuff is actually really tasty to the point where it almost seems like I am eating pudding. Don't get the wrong idea, this was only a part of a jar when visiting people that had kids, I never considered adapting this into some sort of actual diet.
This diet probably wouldn't gain any real traction but a few interviews with celebrities including Jennifer Anniston made people want to jump on that gravy train because Aniston, who is 51, is absolutely stunning so of course the naive members of our population think that all they have to do to look like her is to start eating baby food! Hooray!
src
There are a number of reasons why the baby food diet is flat out crazy and i'll jump into just a few of them now.
Baby food is ludicrously overpriced
So an industry was created where marketing was done to convince you that you absolutely must feed babies this stuff in a jar and then they jack up the price to inkjet cartridge prices. No ethical industry would do such a thing would they? Well I can't think of any particularly good reason why a 4oz jar of strained carrot puree should ever be $1.50 but that's exactly what we end up seeing. This might not be a big deal for Jennifer Aniston, who probably gets it for free anyway but for your average person this "diet" could end up costing $20 a day. Do you make enough money to be spending up to $600 a month on food? I know I don't.
Surprise! Nutritional needs of adults isn't the same as babies!
The dietary needs of a crib-crawler is substantially different than an overweight adult's. For one thing, almost all baby food is very lacking in fiber, calcium, and vitamin D. I suppose you could take a multivitamin to counter it out but the idea that baby food is going to have all the nutrients you need in it as an adult is just insane. I suppose you may as well just start wearing diapers as well. Let's go full crazy if we are going to do it at all.
This is unsustainable - you are going to quit
The major idea behind this program and while it actually has worked for some people is because of the small portions. Portion control is a big problem for a lot of people especially Americans where our salads at a steak restaurant that is meant to be an appetizer is likely more food than many people around the would would eat for an entire meal. This huge influx of calories is why people gain weight. A tiny little jar of baby food, even the sweet dessert tasting ones, is a very small portion and if you are a fatty, this is not going to be enough food for you and you will discover this 10 minutes after scarfing down some pureed bananas when your stomach is growling.
Most people are going to bail on this diet in a few days or at the most a week or two. Do you really think that you are just going to eat baby food forever? How about adopting a bit of impulse control instead? You could always do that!
At the end of the day most nutritionists and doctors who are not paid by Gerber are going to state that the baby food diet is just another gimmicky fad diet that will die out in a short while. People really need to stop listening to what celebrities say and realize that these people are almost certainly paid to say these things by the industries that they are pretending to not promote.
Instead of looking for a fast-forward button to weight loss you might just want to make some gradual and permanent changes to the way that you eat overall. No one is going to stick to this diet and I feel as though most people will likely binge cheat if they ever started this diet at all. Then after failing, they return to their old ways and this kind of demoralizes a person. Stop with the fads folks, there are no shortcuts to a healthy life!
While I do not have any sort of academic qualifications for my opinions I do know that I went from being an athlete to being a fat-lete, and then lost 50 lbs and kept it off with lifestyle changes. You can too!
Wow, I didn´t even know this was a trend :D Sounds so absurd.
yeah it is absurd, just like most things that celebrities do. If it sounds really "out there" and a celebrity is endorsing it, it probably doesn't work and they were paid to say that.