The Scarsdale diet - should I doubt 5/2 as well?

"The diet carries potential health risks and does not instill the kind of healthy eating habits required for sustainable weight loss." Wikipedia

This is a lucky dip. My husband picked it out for me. He realised that this was potentially boring and almost put it back. But I stuck to my resolution to not do that. So I reminded myself of why I had it and got myself a bit worried in the process.

It was a major, major diet at the time. It was published in 1979 and the reason I have it is that my husband was a tiny bit overweight at the time, and wanted to lose weight quickly. So we decided to give it a go. It didn't look too hard.

The basic idea is that you follow his day by day, meal by meal program for two weeks and you will find that you have lost up to 20 lbs of weight, or just over 9 kilograms, which is indeed a lot - a bit more than half of what I lost in two years on my 5/2 diet. And from memory I think David did indeed lose about that much. The thing is that you really cannot keep on this diet for more than two weeks - it's not healthy to do so. Even Dr. Tarnower says so. He is very definite about that. You can, however, take two weeks off on his Keep Trim diet, which is not quite as restrictive, and then do another two weeks of the severe diet.

So what do you have to do? Well it's a low carbohydrate - virtually no carbohydrates are allowed at all - low fat diet - no dairy products. Though I do remember that there was one day on which David was allowed cheese for lunch - which he really enjoyed. No sugar, but lots of protein in the form of meat and fish, and lots of vegetables, but hardly any fruit. I think the aim was to keep to 1000 calories a day.

As I say, Tarnower was very prescriptive about what you could eat, and actually set out a meal by meal menu. The page I opened was one in the middle of his International Diet - he had three different meal plans for you to try. Here is a sample of what you could eat on one day.

Wednesday - French Day

Lunch - one hard cooked egg, marinated vegetables, no-sugar apple sauce on apricot, coffee/tea. The vegetables (zucchini, beans, green capsicum white onions) were marinated in chicken stock, a bit of white wine, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, dried thyme and Worcestershire sauce). I'm guessing the chicken stock would have to be fat free.

Dinner - artichoke provençale (basically simmered in a bit of stock with some lettuce and peas), Chicken à l'estragon (poached chicken), céleri au jus (braised in stock), pour glacée (poached pear in wine).

I could list the other days as well, but you get the idea. I did try very hard to make it all palatable and I guess it was OK if you liked pretty plain food. Breakfast was always the same - a piece of fruit and a toasted slice of protein bread without butter or anything plus some coffee or tea. David found this very difficult, as breakfast is his favourite meal. And no snacks at all.

As I say, if you are only doing this for a couple of weeks I guess you could put up with the blandness and you certainly don't have to think about what you might and can eat - it's all set out for you in detail. For Dr. Tarnower it ticked all the boxes.

"A good diet must be palatable, safe, satisfying, and uncomplicated. It must show results in a reasonably short period of time. And most important of all it must help to develop a lifetime pattern of good eating habits so that the weight lost will stay lost." Herman Tarnower

And he is sort of right about that. The trouble with the Scarsdale diet seems to be that it is not a healthy way to eat.

So what do today's experts say? Well they are not enthusiastic. They think it is potentially dangerous in fact. The do agree that it has the advantage of being simple and easy to follow and that it does not cost a lot of money, either by having to buy expensive foodstuffs and supplements or by having to pay a subscription. But it is dangerously low in foods that we need - carbohydrates and proteins. I have to say they seemed a bit confused about the fat content - as am I.

"According to 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines, adult men and women are advised to consume 10-35 percent of calories from protein, 45-65 percent of calories from carbohydrate, and 20-35 percent of calories from fat with an emphasis on healthy fat. The USDA also provides a recommendation for dietary fiber (approximately 23-33 grams per day).

On the Scarsdale diet, you consume 43 percent of your calories from protein, 22.5 percent of calories from fat. and 34.5 percent of your calories from carbohydrates. Fat intake comes primarily from saturated fat and fiber intake is low."

The experts also say that it took no account of individual metabolism, distribution of weight, health problems, etc. It was a one size fits all solution.

But now I'm worried about my 5/2 diet. Is that bad too? Is that a crash diet? Because the general dietician opinion seems to be that all crash diets are bad. Really we should just eat a healthy Mediterranean diet, (but not too much of it) on a daily basis. Which is fine in theory, but I just can't do that. If you put something delicious in front of me I will eat it. Not really excessively, but a bit too much. Food for thought though. I mean Michael Moseley is a bit like a modern day Herman Tarnower and probably a bit less qualified too.

Herman Tarnower, shown here in his younger days, was a New York cardiologist. He set up his own cardiology centre just outside New York in Scarsdale, which is where the name comes from. He was a bit of a womaniser, which led to his death at the hand of his lover, Jean Harris a year after the book was published. And guess what - this increased the sales of the book enormously. This was before the days of the internet, but I think a telemovie and an actual movie were made of this torrid disaster. It was a hot scandal.

In the light of his death it is rather sad that the very first line in the book - in the acknowledgements - is:

"We are grateful to Jean Harris for her splendid assistance in the research and writing of this book."

That's not a royal we - the book was co-written with Samm Sinclair Baker - a Michael Moseley of his time.

An interesting little blast from the past. It's out of print these days, but there are still some website fan sites and there are always second hand copies around - there will be one more soon as I think this one is going in my op shop box.