Cookie Diet
In the world of fad diets almost nothing can be more absurd than the cookie diet. This diet is based on a mixture of amino acids baked into a cookie designed to control a patient’s hunger.
Fad diets are short term diets in which people are to lose a lot of weight, and are popular because of their claims of great weight loss. Often times, like the cookie diet, these diets rely on one miracle food with amazing properties for weight loss. In this sense they are something like the old traveling medicine shows, in which a slick talking salesman would expound on the virtues of some magical formula created by a Guru of some type.
Sanford Siegel created the cookie diet in 1975 while he was doing research for a nutrition book. To maintain the cookie diet people would eat six cookies a day, plus a regular dinner. There were about 500 calories combined in the cookies, and the dinner could be 300 calories in the evening. Very quickly the cookie diet became a huge success, with 14 clinics in Florida and 10 in Latin America expounding this amazing weight loss formula. By the 80’s 200 doctors were pushing the cookie diet. The diet was quickly expanded to miracle soups and shakes that also contained the amino acids.
Later Hollywood grabbed the cookie diet. This diet received a great deal of media attention in part because of the PR efforts of attention grabbing stars and starlets. This diet is similar to the original in that it consists of a cookie for breakfast, a cookie as a snack in the morning, a cookie for lunch, a cookie as a mid-afternoon snack, and then a reasonable dinner. These cookies each contain 150 calories and fiber, protein and minerals.
Don’t waste time with the cookie diet. Eat less, exercise more, that’s the formula for good health. Even if the star of your favorite movie claims to love them, avoid so called miracle weight loss foods.
