The Methadone Diet
Ok, it’s not a real diet…it’s just my private nickname for the Slim Fast diet plan…as of yesterday.
I mostly work on the bodybuilding/fitness side of things, so Slim Fast typically doesn’t show up on my radar screen. That should tell you something right there: bodybuilders are some of the leanest people in the world, and are obsessed with keeping body fat low. They’re ALWAYS looking for proven ways to get lean…yet they wouldn’t touch this stuff with a ten-foot pole. But I’m also in charge of the Functional Food section, now…and Slim Fast products are on the list. I already had a couple of “Optima” bars on hand to sample, so after a light breakfast, I decided to tuck in.
OMFG – those bars were SWEEEET! Gaggingly, horribly, sickeningly sweet. We’re talking cheap-Halloween-or-Easter-candy sweet. Sugar-eaten-straight-off-the-spoon sweet. It was the bar equivalent of gargling with Karo Syrup. Urrrrggh. I’ve sampled a fair number of protein/energy bars, and these are easily the sweetest I’ve ever tasted. Hell, even most straight-up candy bars aren’t this cloying.
That’s when the “methadone” analogy hit me…while the high sugar content of the Slim Fast shakes was discussed in Paul’s review, one of the subtler points is that the entire plan is designed to reinforce one of the habits that helps make people fat in the first place: overconsumption of sweet/sugary foods. On a whim, I ambled over to SlimFast.com, and ran a sample, “customized” meal plan using their online calculator. This is what it looked like:
Breakfast: Optima Shake
Snack: 1/2 banana
Lunch: Optima Shake + 1/2 turkey sandwich
Snack: Small Apple
Sensible Meal: Vegetable, Starch and Protein
Snack: 1 c. grapes
In addition to the shakes, all the snacks were fruit…now fruit is certainly nutritious, and a good source of fiber, but it’s also sweet. So, between the shakes/bars and fruit snacks, the Slim Fast plan pretty much has you eating sweet foods all day long. Needless to state, if you’re trying to break yourself of a sweet tooth, this isn’t the best way go about it.
It’s like “curing” people of a heroin addiction by hooking them on methadone. Sure, the Slim Fast plan is low (too low) in calories, so people can lose some weight if they stick to it. But the bulk of the plan’s calories are still coming from carbs and simple sugars. The plan does little to encourage better eating habits over the long term, which is ultimately what’s needed for weight maintenance.
January 8, 2009
I understand this. I made the mistake too of just having a little chocolate early in December. Then next thing I know it’s a lot of chocolate I’m consuming.