The British Heart Foundation Diet

The British Heart Foundation or BHF, a leading U.K. charity organisation that funds research aimed at preventing heart diseases in humans, has issued a statement recently denying that it had anything to do with the formulation of or that it was in any way recommending the use of a diet that was falsely labeled as the British Heart Foundation Diet.

A fad diet that has circulated the U.K. for many years, the origins of the British Heart Association Diet (also known as the Greenlane Diet) remains unknown to this day although some note a very striking resemblance with a diet that was popular in the 1970's known as the Scarsdale Diet.

Developed by Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet is a 14-day diet that is high in protein, low in carbohydrates, and moderate in fat. It guarantees an unreasonable one-pound-a-day weight loss by reducing food intake to specified amounts of fruits, vegetables and mostly lean meats. It also only allows three meals a day and bans snacking. It also recommends the use of artificial sweeteners and herbal appetite suppressants. Exercise is not advocated, especially for those over 40, perhaps because the low calorie meals are not sufficient to provide the much-needed energy needed for a 30-minute walk. 
 
Like the Scarsdale Diet, the British Heart Foundation Diet guarantees an unrealistic number of pounds lost within an extremely brief period. Even worse, the phony diet guarantees weight loss of 10 pounds within, not 14 days like the Scarsdale Diet, but a mere 3 days. This is a totally unhealthy proposition that can trigger a famine syndrome in the dieter that may eventually lead to bigger weight gain as a result of the body's efforts to protect itself and compensate for the lack of sustenance. Because it advocates excessively quick weight loss within a very short span of time and as a result of excessively low food intake, the British Foundation 3-Day Diet is NOT A RECOMMENDED DIET. It is considered as nothing more than a fad crash diet.

As the British Heart Foundation has stated, crash diets are not good for one's body because the massive weight loss that it results in can create abnormal conditions within the body and trigger undesirable results. For one thing, the inadequate food intake may not be sufficient to supply the much-needed vitamins and minerals required by the body for its proper functioning. Secondly, the body may respond to the extremely low food intake (not more than 700 calories per day) by slowing down metabolism which may lead to the slow burning of calories and even greater increase in weight. The British Heart Foundation believes that an effective and sound weight loss program must aim for an average decrease in weight of no more than 2 pounds per week. This also assures that the dieter has a good chance of keeping the weight off.