Every so often, a new diet will increase in popularity, guaranteeing varying degrees of weight loss or health benefits. Although they may sound healthy, their long term effects often are not.

For some, living a life without gluten is essential to survival. Those who have Celiac disease cannot eat gluten, as their body treats it like something foreign when it enters the system. The small intestine is then unable to absorb nutrients properly, often leading to many other health complications.

This causes the individual in question to eliminate any products containing gluten from their diet, as this is the only treatment thus far.

Unless you are medically proven be unable to digest gluten-containing foods, gluten should be in everyone’s diet. As a high source of protein, iron and other important supplements, there are many reasons to eat foods that contain gluten.

A 2002 study by the Coeliac Center in Linköping, Sweden published in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics found that individuals who had been on a gluten-free diet for a number years had low nutrient levels in their bodies.

For those living with Celiac disease, nutrient levels are much more difficult to attain as their bodies cannot absorb nutrients effectively.

However, when individuals who are not gluten-sensitive or gluten-intolerant completely eliminate all things gluten from their diet, they leave themselves without some essential nutrients that the human body needs in order to operate effectively.

Many gluten-free foods such as gluten-free junk food are basically just large servings of calories with very little nutrient value.

Although junk food is not necessarily healthy in the first place, junk food that contains gluten is actually healthier than gluten-free junk food in regards to what benefits you receive from eating it.

An entirely different approach to dieting is offered by those who want us to reach into our distant past for healthy eating patterns. The paleo diet is derived from what we assume was the diet of early humans, the hunter-gatherers — not that much is currently known and we are still learning a lot in this area.

As Loren Cordain argues in his book The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat, humans would be best off by eating the same diet as our stone-age ancestors.

This diet is void of dairy, cereal grains, salt, refined sugars — excluding honey — starchy fruit and vegetables and non-lean animal meats. In today’s modern era, these restrictions limit the vast majority of our diet, making for extensive work when preparing meals.

What this dietary fad ignores is the scientific evidence of our recent evolution, such as the ability to digest lactose, which originated from a mutation that occurred less than 10,000 years ago.

This mutation spread rapidly through large parts of the human population, as it offered benefits to our survival. As Marlene Zuk points out in her critique of the paleo diet, Paleofantasy, older doesn’t always mean better.

The issue with all fad diets is that they spread like memes through the population, with little thought being given. In addition, many quick-thinking salespeople could take advantage of this act to make a buck or 10.

Fad diets also depend on our gullibility and the ease with which we can be manipulated to feel guilty about our diet or body shape in order to get us to part with our hard-earned cash.

Diets almost always promise silver-bullet solutions — but we are no werewolves, and therefore a healthy dose of cautiousness and a good dose of science is useful to keep in mind when the next fad comes around.

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Jeremy Britz / Graphics Editor