Doing the Dukan

I thought low carb diets had died out with the nineties but they seem to be back in vogue with the popularity of the new Dukan diet.

Whilst low-carb diets can be very effective for short term weight loss their long term health benefits are questionable, particularly being high in saturated fats, low in fibre and low in antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin C.

Atkins actually recognised this and improved on his diet in later books placing a greater emphasis of fruit and vegetables and minimising saturated fat intake. However the Dukan diet is infact a more extreme interpretation with absolutely no fruit or vegetables included in the initial phase and then still only allowed 5 days a week in the subsequent phase.

This leaves you with a menu of meat, fish, eggs and low fat dairy products and pretty much nothing else! Not exactly a balanced diet!

Obviously it's the quick results that attract dieters to such an extreme regimen, but if you are tempted to follow a low-carb diet I'd strongly recommend including at least 6 portions of vegetables daily plus topping up your vitamin C levels with lemon and lime juices. However thin it gets you, no diet is worth cutting out the most health giving foods on the planet. Plus, no one ever got overweight by eating too many greens!
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