Twelve Reasons to Avoid the South Beach Diet

Dr. Atkins new team made the same error as Dr. Agatston in the South Beach Diet in advocating the use of the glycemic index in choosing foods. In his book, Dr. Atkins says the glycemic index is a beautiful tool and a highly effective system and advocates using this tool to choose your foods not only for weight loss but also for minimizing risk factors associated with certain diseases.

If you have read the South Beach Diet you might be surprised to find that French fries were eliminated in the above plan as the book clearly and strongly recommends them as an alternative to baked potatoes as they have more fat. It is this type of profound nutritional ignorance that makes it clear the South Beach Diet is relatively clueless when it comes to sound nutritional advice.

I have great respect for Rodale books publisher and how they were able to achieve such phenomenal success with a book that certainly moves the public in the general direction of what to eat. However, the book has some major room for improvement as you will see if you read the article I wrote last year on the 12 Reasons Why People Should Avoid the South Beach Diet.

And while school administrators made a well-intentioned effort to combat the spiraling obesity epidemic thats affecting both children and adults--by replacing junk cafeteria food with healthy alternatives--the South Beach Diet is a one-size-fits-all program that completely ignores the fact that we have different genetic requirements for optimal health.

If permanently losing weight while improving your health is a real goal of yours in 2005, I highly recommend you read the new book by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, Eat Fat, Lose Fat. Lose Weight and Feel Great with the Delicious, Science-Based Coconut Diet.

This book provides you clear guidelines to achieve your health and weight goals, and it is also a fascinating and well-researched read that, once and for all, dispels all the dietary myths surrounding fats.

Read More and Get it Now for Over 30pct. Off.

Now, in one concise and enjoyable. read, you will learn which fats should really be avoided, and which fats you should consume and in what quantity to help you optimize your weight while increasing your ability to prevent disease and premature aging.

The prime choice among these recommended fats, as you can guess from the title, is coconut oil. In addition to the many disease-fighting benefits of coconut, Enig reveals the 25 ways to enjoy these benefits of coconuts p. 111 and supplies you with a cornucopia of coconut listing the various forms in which coconut is available. p. 64

Youve read about the remarkable health benefits of coconut oil here at Mercola.com before, including that it can actually help curb your appetite, but Enig and Fallon, both pioneers in the movement to right all the misconceptions that have been fostered about healthy versus unhealthy fats, do a masterful job in Eat Fat, Lose Fat of presenting all the research that has proven the remarkable benefits of coconut oil and other good oils and fats ... in a way anyone will understand and appreciate reading.

How Eat Fat, Lose Fat Breaks the Fat Myths Once and for All

Since the 1950s the government, media, health experts and food advertisers have engrained the following five words into the minds of Americans. Avoid foods high in fat.

In turn, many Americans cut down on saturated and other forms of fat that are actually quite healthy and necessary to the body at the appropriate levels. And heres what happened. America got fatter anyway, and sicker too.

Today, as you well know if youve read even just a few issues of the free Mercola.com e-newsletter, nearly three-quarters of all Americans are considered overweight. Meanwhile, diseases that are associated with overweight, such as diabetes, are at epidemic proportions in the United States.

Dr. Mary Enig, world-renowned biochemist and nutritionist, and Sally Fallon, founder and president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, address this apparent paradox in Eat Fat, Lose Fat ... and prove it is no paradox at all.

As you will read in fascinating detail, the no saturated fat, no coconut oil, no tropical oil. mantra of previous decades was dead wrong, propelled more by commercial interests than your interests.

With the new Eat Fat, Lose Fat, you will learn the truth about which fats are actually good for you particularly coconut oil and can help you LOSE weight and increase health -- along with the other foods that can help as well. And you will get commonsense guidelines for incorporating healthy fats like coconut into your life right away.

In the chapter titled Health Recovery Enig and Fallon describe the ways coconut contributes to recovery from specific health conditions such as.

Diabetes p. 143

Depression p. 145

Fungal infections p. 146

Gallbladder ailments p. 146

Hypoglycemia p. 149

Immune system disorders p. 149

The Fat Facts, Plus a Whole Lot More

Part one of this book provides you with the scientific research on all fats and explores the vast health benefits of coconut oil. In these chapters you will learn the truth behind the Top Four High-Fat Health Myths.

High-fat foods cause heart disease p. 26

High cholesterol causes heart disease p. 28

High-fat foods increase blood cholesterol p. 31

Cholesterol causes plaque buildup in arteries p. 32

Based on years of research and experience, Enig and Fallon also present a compelling and detailed description of why popular diets such as Atkins p.66 and the South Beach Diet p. 70 ultimately fail so many people.

In Part 2 of the book, the authors show you how to build your own comprehensive and commonsense nutritional plan, while Part 3 provides you menu planning and some very delicious recipes.

A Solid Plan for Permanent Weight-Loss Success

While the insights you will read are fascinating, you also want results from the knowledge.

In simple, easy-to-follow steps, Eat Fat, Lose Fat walks you through how to create the most ideal and nutritious weight-loss plan for you. You will be able to choose from one of the three nutritional programs that best suit you.

Quick and Easy Weight Loss p. 104

Health Recovery p. 134

Everyday Gourmet p. 166

The last section of the book contains some delicious recipes so you can put the nutrition plan outlined in her book into action in your daily life. I call these realistic recipes because they are designed to fit the busy lifestyle most of us face. But not only are they quick to prepare -- they are also healthy and incredibly tasty.

Most famously, Dr. Robert Atkins advised to simply give up sugar and other high-carbohydrate foods altogether, while consoling oneself for the loss with unlimited high-fat and high-protein foods. This diet has worked miraculously for many people, in both weight loss and improved well-being. Yet for many others, large quantities of proteins and fats are not at all digestible or appropriate for their metabolic type.

Dr. Barry Sears The Zone offers some simple sugars in the diet along with mostly healthier foods, but this just keeps the addiction going and does not heal the main problem of sugar cravings.

Dr. Arthur Agatstons The South Beach Diet urges minimizing sweets, but also includes such items as ice cream and bread, which contribute to the long-term torture of a frequently teased addiction.

A similar problem occurs with The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet by Drs. Rachael and Richard Heller, in which a reward meal is available in the evening to those who have denied their sugar cravings during the day. This also keeps a sugar addiction regularly fueled and stoked, ultimately resulting in frustration for the trusting dieter. These diets are as defeating in the long run for the sugar consumer as one cigarette a day -- for years -- is for the smoker.

Writers such as William Duffy Sugar Blues and Nancy Appleton Lick the Sugar Habit have dealt with the problem of sugar addiction by warning of the medical horrors of long-term sugar consumption and by advocating complete avoidance. The diets exclude sugars and Dr. Appleton advocates chromium and glutamine supplements to replenish the sugar-ravaged body and to stabilize sugar cravings.

Another workable diet, which is less well-known than most of the preceding works, is The Sugar Addicts Total Recovery Program, by Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., in which the dieter works in stages, going slow carb first before low carb. Slow carbs are those that are accompanied by a lot of fiber or protein, which slow down the entry of sugar to the bloodstream.

If you arent yet familiar with Dr. Mercolas program - and where have you been if you arent -- imagine the weight loss benefits of the Atkins or South Beach Diet, but then also throw in avoiding disease and premature aging, increasing your energy dramatically, and therefore improving your ability to succeed in relationships and in life for that matter. Thats what youll get with Dr. Mercolas Total Health Program.

Dr. Atkins makes the same mistake as Dr. Agatston in the South Beach Diet in advocating the use of the glycemic index in choosing foods. On page 78 Dr. Atkins says the glycemic index is a beautiful tool and a highly effective system and he advocates using this tool to choose your foods not only for weight loss but for minimizing risk factors associated with certain diseases.

This is very misleading advice, as I have found the glycemic index to be of little value, primarily because it contains MANY exceptions that render it practically useless. Take fructose for example. Although it has a very low glycemic index and is acceptable if you follow the index standards, fructose is one of the major reasons why people are overweight. And fructose is not the only exception. Many other low glycemic index foods, like apple juice, chocolate and cherries, should not be eaten if your goal is to lose weight. Clearly, the glycemic index is not a reliable method to lose weight or achieve any other health-promoting state.

Counting Carb Calories is Unnecessary

The Atkins Diet encourages the use of a carbohydrate gram counter to keep track of carb calories. The emphasis is particularly strong during the Ongoing Weight Loss phase where it says on page 169, If you dont count, you could get in trouble. Not only is this a cumbersome and time-consuming way to live, it is also completely unnecessary.

When you eat the diet that I have detailed in my Total Health Program, a diet that is ideal for your metabolic type, you eat until you are full and satisfied. When you eat the ideal foods for you, counting carbs or anything else becomes unnecessary because your body will naturally tell you when its time to stop eating, and when its time to start.

Sucralose Splenda is Recommended Despite Health Risks

Dr. Atkins heartily recommends and endorses, on page 128, the use of sucralose, sold as Splenda, and appears unaware of the many concerns surrounding this potentially problematic sweetener.

There are currently NO large studies underway researching the safety of this artificial sweetener, and Splenda was released with few studies to support its safety. Its important to realize that this is the same pattern that occurred with the artificial sweeteners aspartame and saccharine--two sweeteners that are now widely known to cause numerous health problems. I encourage you to read the many reader testimonials that can attest to the potential dangers of sucralose.

Nuts are Not Ideal

Like the South Beach Diet, the Atkins Diet encourages you to eat nuts. While nuts can have important health benefits, nuts are high in omega-6 fats so if you are not supplementing your diet with fish oils it is likely your omega 6.3 ratio is about 15.1 rather than the ideal 1.1. This distortion of the omega 6.3 ratio is one of the major contributing factors to most chronic degenerative diseases.

Not Enough Exercise for Ideal Weight Loss

Dr. Atkins recommends only 30 daily minutes of cardiovascular exercise, but for most overweight people twice that amount is needed. For overweight people trying to lose weight, 60 minutes of daily exercise is necessary to increase the number of mitochondria in muscles--this will increase metabolic rate to continue to burn calories at rest and even while sleeping.

South Beach Diet Debuting in Schools

The US government is taking great strides in their fervor to address the increasing childhood obesity epidemic. Currently, there are nearly nine million obese children in the United States. This is a devastating disease risk factor as it typically leads to diabetes, high blood pressure heart disease, enormous social challenges and discrimination.

In an ambitious attempt to ease this concern, a research center, founded by the author of the South Beach Diet, is in the midst of a study involving six schools in an Orlando suburb. Four of the schools have changed their cafeteria menus to incorporate healthy foods, while the remaining two are being used as controls with unchanged menus. The studys goal is three-fold. To determine whether school cafeterias are capable of serving more nutritious food, whether kids will eat the food being provided and whether their health will improve.

Researchers explain they are not putting the 3,000 students involved in the study on the low-carb South Beach Diet. however, the diets guiding principles have clearly weaseled their way into the schools menus.

Menu Modifications Include

Whole-wheat bread has replaced white bread

Sweet potatoes took the place of white potatoes

Grilled chicken instead of breaded chicken

French fries were eliminated

And for dessert. fruit

Measurements of the students weight, height, blood pressure and pulse were recorded at the start of the school year, and will be taken once again in April. The institute responsible for the study has paid for the USD10,000 extra cost.

A number of obstacles have presented themselves throughout the study, the biggest being access to healthier ingredients. Moreover, the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables is significantly shorter than frozen or canned foods, making it difficult to buy in bulk. Produce is also more expensive and perishable.

ABC News March 7, 2005

Dr. Mercolas Comment.

If you have read the South Beach Diet you might be surprised to find that French fries were eliminated in the above plan as the book clearly and strongly recommends them as an alternative to baked potatoes as they have more fat. It is this type of profound nutritional ignorance that makes it clear the South Beach Diet is relatively clueless when it comes to sound nutritional advice.

I have great respect for Rodale books publisher and how they were able to achieve such phenomenal success with a book that certainly moves the public in the general direction of what to eat. However, the book has some major room for improvement as you will see if you read the article I wrote last year on the 12 Reasons Why People Should Avoid the South Beach Diet.

And while school administrators made a well-intentioned effort to combat the spiraling obesity epidemic thats affecting both children and adults--by replacing junk cafeteria food with healthy alternatives--the South Beach Diet is a one-size-fits-all program that completely ignores the fact that we have different genetic requirements for optimal health.

Please understand that universal diets simply dont work for everyone. There isnt a one-size fits all diet that is perfect for everyone as we are all quite different. The simple fact is that one third of people actually need a high-carb diet with limited or no grains to lose weight, not a low carb diet like South Beach. Many of you know that the principles of metabolic typing expand on this and I believe are a crucial part to sustaining your optimal health and wellness.

Overall I believe The South Beach Diets success is a powerful influence in several important respects. With sales in the millions, The South Beach Diet has joined the groundbreaking Atkins Diet in prompting deeper inquiry into the value of low-carbohydrate dieting, and has been central to making lower-carb cuisine more widely available. Just as important, it has also helped to destroy the dangerous myth -- a myth that prevailed for thirty years -- that low-fat dieting is safe and effective.

That said -- and as a physician with over two decades of clinical experience who is highly respected for my dietary program, with a New York Times bestseller of my own, and most importantly, who maintains strict adherence to the Hippocratic oath to first do no harm -- I would never recommend The South Beach Diet to any of my patients. In fact, Id like to warn everyone about the dangers of adopting Dr. Agatstons popular diet.

If you know anyone on or considering The South Beach Diet, please

document.write forward this article to them .

forward this article to them so that they can make an informed decision

First, I have great respect for Rodale Press, the books publisher. They also publish Prevention Magazine, which I used to read regularly back in the 1970s one of their articles in fact inspired me to select osteopathic medicine as opposed to a traditional M.D. school, and the www.prevention.com website, which is the number two natural health website on the Internet behind only my own, www.Mercola.com. Rodale is also an exceptionally astute and effective marketing company, which leads me to my first point.

The South Beach Diet must be a worthwhile diet, a widely prevalent logic goes, or else it wouldnt have sold millions of copies.

By now Americans ought to know that just because something sells well it doesnt mean that its worth buying, and yet the flawed logic above prevails. Bottom line is, the major reason for The South Beach Diets success is that Rodale has spent in excess of one million dollars per month to promote this book. A marketing budget of that size could turn a bicycle repair manual into a major bestseller.

Whats more, according to various reports that are easily accessible by searching Google, with all theyve spent on marketing the book versus all the books sales, it is my understanding that Rodale has actually taken a loss on the book. Theyre a clever company, though, and I believe that loss is only temporary, serving more so as an investment in their ever expanding publishing empire. But dont be swayed by the books phenomenal sales -- there are many reasons for you to avoid jumping on the South Beach bandwagon. I list twelve important ones below that should be enough to help you think twice about this diet that is synonymous with fad in all honesty, I could write an entire book pointing out how misguided Dr. Agatstons diet is, but I am hoping twelve suffice here for you to think twice about this diet.

Reason 1. Gets the Good Carbs Wrong -- At the Risk of Many Peoples Health

Dr. Agatston promotes the concept that I have long recommended and detail in my TOTAL HEALTH Program--there are good carbs that you should be consuming and bad carbs you should avoid. But then, on the simplest levels, he gets the good carbs wrong, including promoting both whole grain breads and fruits as good carbs. This advice can seriously impair the health of the millions of people in this country with sub clinical gluten sensitivity. It is also a prescription for disaster for the large number who have high carbohydrate sensitivity and struggle with controlling their insulin. It is best that ALL grains and sugars fruits, as opposed to vegetables, have high sugar content be avoided until insulin levels are normalized.

Reason 2. Severely Misguided Advice Can Lead to Dangerous Levels of Mercury and PCBs in You

Dr. Agatston recommends fish, displaying absolutely no understanding that nearly all fish from every type of water source are now contaminated with dangerous levels of mercury and PCBs from generations of water pollution from coal plants and other sources. Mercury and PCBs can lead to all kinds of very serious disease including neurological disorders.

The dangerous levels of toxins in fish is not hearsay but a warning that has been issued by many health practitioners and major health and government agencies--even the very conservative EPA advises pregnant women to avoid fish --and I have witnessed the epidemic with thousands of patients in my own clinic.

Either Agatston is not aware of this important issue or decided not to cover it. no mention is made that, to safely avoid the mercury and PCB issue in fish while still getting proper omega-3 intake, substituting clean sources of bottled or capsule fish oil is by far the wisest option.

Moreover, a USA Today report suggested that it would cost over USD90 a week to follow the misguided fish intake recommended by The South Beach Diet anyway.

Reason 3. Advice on Milk May Worsen a Common Allergy

Dr. Agaston freely advocates commercial pasteurized milk. He is obviously unaware of the major problems many people have with pasteurized casein and its prevalence as one of the most common food allergies further, as he is positioning himself as a dietary expert, he should be aware and note that many people arent even yet aware they have this allergy.

Though consuming raw unpasteurized milk is still a controversial topic, for some people many of the problems they experience with pasteurized milk disappear when they consume clean milk in its raw state raw milk is becomingly increasingly available again. However, even in a clean, raw state many still are unable to tolerate it. The point is, none of this essential information that impacts many people is covered in The South Beach Diet.

Reason 4. Buys Into the Old Myth of Saturated Fat -- at Your Expense

Dr. Agatston fortunately does not buy into the myth that eggs are bad eggs can be quite healthy for you, especially organic eggs, but he is still under the delusion that saturated fat is bad for everyone. Like carbohydrates, though, some high quality saturated food is not merely okay but needs to be part of a truly healthy diet. What matters, as with carbs and all macronutrients, is that you are getting your saturated fat from a clean and healthy source such as organic virgin coconut oil. Search saturated fat on Mercola.com for more on this issue.

Reason 5. Recommends Aspartame ... Widely Recognized as a Health Hazard

Though NutraSweet/aspartame has been shown in many studies to be dangerous, linked to a wide range of diseases such as cancer and diabetes and various emotional disorders read Articles on Aspartame on Mercola.com or input aspartame into the Mercola.com search engine, Dr. Agatston actually encourages its use in The South Beach Diet.

Reason 6. Dangerous Misguidance on a Serious Trans-Fat Issue

Perhaps Dr. Agatstons most significant oversight is his lack of understanding of trans fats. Early in the book he states that trans-fats are dangerous and need to be avoided, yet on page 54 he makes the outrageous claim that French fries and potato chips are healthier choices than baked potatoes because of the fat in which theyre cooked. This is extremely dangerous misinformation, as French fries and potato chips tend to be profoundly high in trans fats and are amongst the unhealthiest foods on the planet.

I perceive this statement as irrefutable evidence of his nutritional ignorance. I cant possibly imagine anyone with even a minimum amount of nutritional biochemical education making a recommendation like that. Although Dr. Agatston is a cardiologist as Dr. Atkins was, he was never part of the pioneering group of physicians who understood nutrition as it relates to health which Atkins was. I have some disagreements with Dr. Atkins program, but they are relatively minor compared to my objections with The South Beach Diet. Dr. Atkins would never have advocated eating French fries or potato chips. These foods are the toxic equivalent of a cigarette and should be avoided like the plague.

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Reason 7. Even More Misguidance on Fats

Further displaying his lack of knowledge on fats, Dr. Agatston promotes the use of synthetic margarines like I Cant Believe Its Not Butter versus the healthier choice, real butter. He is not aware that the process of creating this type of margarine completely distorts the physical structure of its fats, making it nearly as dangerous as margarines that have trans-fats. He is apparently making this recommendation due to his phobia of saturated fat without realizing that, as mentioned above, some saturated fat -- such as healthy saturated fats that are found in raw organic butter and coconut oil -- are necessary for optimal health. Moreover, he classifies all unsaturated fats as healthy, obviously unaware that the high omega-6 unsaturated fat that causes a distortion of the omega 3.6 ratio is one of the major contributing factors to most chronic degenerative diseases.

Reason 8. The Lack of Nutritional Insight Can Be Carcinogenic.

Dr. Agaston continues to display his lack of nutritional awareness by advocating peanut butter on page 49 as a good source of monounsaturated fat and the polyphenolic bioflavanoid, resveratrol. While I am a fan of both of these nutritional items, it is very important to pay attention to the quality of the peanut butter, and the type of peanuts in general. He does advise to avoid peanut butters with added sugar and to use only all-natural peanut butter though he ought to expand a bit on why -- peanuts are probably the crop most heavily sprayed with pesticides in the world, for instance. But he fails to mention one of the most serious peanut issues of all and make recommendations accordingly. most peanuts are very susceptible to contamination by afflatoxin, a carcinogenic mold spore, and so you should seek to restrict peanut butter and any type of peanut product consumption to Valencia peanuts only. This species grows in dry climates, which seriously restricts the growth of afflatoxin. Fortunately, Arrowhead Mills Organic Peanut Butter which you can find in many stores now meets both qualifications.

Reason 9. An Effective Diet Can Eliminate Dependency on Statins, but This One Does Not

Dr. Agatston is still absolutely unaware of the power of an optimized diet to normalize cholesterol, as he still takes a statin drug to lower his own cholesterol and is apparently unaware of the many dangers associated with statin drugs. It is quite possible to avoid statin drugs and supplements to normalize cholesterol levels, and my patients have experienced this success by following my own TOTAL HEALTH Program. I encourage Dr. Agatston to give my program a try as well so he can get off the statin drugs and avoid their risks.

Reason 10. Many Will Not Even Temporarily Lose Weight

The South Beach Diet is a one-size-fits-all diet that completely ignores the fact that we have different genetic requirements for optimal health ... one-size-fits-all diets never work for all, or even close to all. Because of their biochemistry, some people actually need a high carb diet with limited or no grains, while others require the low-carb, high-protein diet that Dr. Atkins advocates.

This is the principle of metabolic typing, and explains why one person will lose weight on a low-carb diet though, as covered throughout this article, they may not necessarily improve their health or lose it permanently, unless it is a healthy low-carb diet while another person will not lose any on the identical diet. To understand this principle in more detail and learn your own metabolic type so you can optimize your efforts at truly effective weight loss and improve your health while you are at it, I urge you to read Modify Your Diet So You Feel Terrific on Mercola.com, or type in metabolic typing on the Mercola.com search engine. You can also find a basic test to determine your specific type in my TOTAL HEALTH Program, or you can take my free online metabolic type test now.

The South Beach Diet also contains a serious lack of appropriate guidance on the Glycemic Index. Dr. Agatston relies on this index as a tool in weight loss, but I have found it anything besides useful, as it contains far, far too many exceptions to be of any value. A classic example is fructose, which has a very low glycemic index yet has been clearly established as a major reason why many people are overweight. If you follow Dr. Agastons advice in this regard you will be going down the weight gain path for sure. This is also an issue with some of the low glycemic index foods like chocolate, cherries, and apple juice, which we know should be avoided if you want to lose weight, yet would seem to have nearly unlimited access to if you follow The South Beach Diet.

Reason 11. Too Lax on the Exercise for Most Readers

Exercise is a critical part of any permanent weight loss regime, but Dr. Agatstons advice on exercise is highly debatable. While I absolutely agree with his central thesis that we dont need to train like an Olympic hopeful and that 20 minutes a day is sufficient, this advice is only for people who are already in shape. Most people in this country, and likely even a higher proportion of those reading a weight loss book, have developed a serious exercise deficiency and will need far higher levels of exercise to make a significant influence on up-regulating the bodys metabolic machinery to burn fats continuously, especially while one sleeps.

Reason 12. Most Will NOT Lose Weight Permanently with this Diet

The book is subtitled, The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss, but I suspect many people buying the book care much more about the weight loss aspect than the healthy aspect. As you can figure out from points above, the diet has very little to do with improving your health anyway, and can lead you in the opposite direction.

Even in terms of losing weight, though, the book might succeed for some in the short-term like many fad diets, but most will not permanently lose weight. Agatston even alludes to this in the chapter entitled Why Do People Occasionally Fail on This Diet though he seems to demonstrate just more lack of insight on the real why in that chapter.

By far the main reason most people will fail at losing weight permanently on this diet and many other popular diets is because no real solutions have been presented for the emotional challenges that come with dieting ... and those challenges are, far more than knowing what is right and wrong, the biggest challenges of all.

There are solutions to the emotional challenges such as cravings, food addictions, self-image issues and the other self-sabotaging behavior I encourage you to search Mercola.com for more on this topic, so it is extremely distressing that in Dr. Agatstons program -- and in this day and age in any dietary program -- these werent covered effectively.

In short, even if The South Beach Diets nutritional recommendations were solid -- and they are by no means solid -- without covering the emotional component, adherents to the diet are left with a void where some of the most important advice to them should be. Therefore, most who swear by the diet because it helped them shed a few pounds in the short-term will ultimately end up where they started before The South Beach Diet ... that is, desperate for real help and a prime target for yet another heavily marketed fad diet book promising the world but delivering