Fad Diet Case Study Examples

The Cabbage Soup Diet, as with most fad diets, is a quick way to lose a few pounds. Cabbage Soup, made with vegetables, tomato sauce, and a chicken or beef stock is a very low calorie food. This diet runs its course in seven days. Cabbage soup is consumed every day, with alternating veggie and fruit days. For example, on the first day cabbage soup is eaten with additional vegetables only. On the second day, only the soup and some fruit are consumed. On the third day, it is the cabbage soup with both fruit and veggies. During the next few days such things as light protein can be introduced with fruits such as bananas.
The attractive feature of the diet is that a person could basically eat this food all day long and consume very little calories, allowing the dieter to go without hunger, but permitting simultaneous weight loss. Second, cabbage soup is relatively easy and cheap food to prepare, making it a plentiful food staple around the house. It is also very delicious, when the right seasoning are used.
However, there are some downsides to participating in this diet. People will get tired of eating the same food every day and severe cravings will develop, making binge episodes likely. Second, most of the weight lost during this diet is lost through water, so when people go off the diet the pounds are gained back rather quickly.
The Cabbage Soup Diet is an extremely low calorie diet, and most health professionals agree that these diets can lower the metabolism of its participants, leading to what experts term adaptive thermogenesis, or starvation mode (Hoffer, Bistrian, Young, Blackburn and Matthews). The Cabbage Diet, therefore, is effective in the short term, but ineffective in the long term.Works Cited
Hoffer, L. J., B. R. Bistrian, V. R. Young, G. L. Blackburn, and D. E. Matthews. "Metabolic Effects of Very Low Calorie Weight ReductionDiets." Journal of Clinical Investigation. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.