How About a Side of Kanten With That?

From: Maureen Allen, M.P.H.

                     

It's only a matter of time until Tokyo’s latest diet craze hits our shores. And I mean that literally. Because it’s seaweed! The new diet food is Kanten - a gelatin made from ground-up seaweed. It’s promising to be the most popular Japanese export since Yu-gi-oh. Sound gross? Maybe, but it has no calories or fat and adds bulk and fiber to food. Think volume without the planning.

Kanten is available in threads or cubes at Asian grocery stores and on-line. After soaking it for about 20 minutes, it can be added to soups, sauces or desserts. Dieters lose weight without feeling hungry. If you’re fuller faster you’ll put down your fork faster too. Vegetarians prefer it to regular gelatin which is ground up animal hooves. Yum.

If Kanten’s not doing it for you, look no farther than California.  The Sonoma Diet and the Golden Gate Diet are gaining traction and their respective authors are hitting the airwaves. As you would imagine, wine is allowed everyday on the Sonoma diet. The Golden Gate diet contains no seaweed of any kind.

Still not inspired? Then how about the What Would Jesus Eat plan? God only knows what’s allowed on that diet.

The bottom line is most diets – even if they are quirky - will probably work as long as they are balanced and you stick with them long enough. The hard part is the weight management phase which lasts the rest of your life and doesn’t have a catchy title. Someone needs to write the maintenance manual. In all fairness, the Sonoma Diet does offer a life plan for eating and some of the others may also. But the true test of a diet’s success is long-term weight management. That’s where the rubber hits the road and the real work begins.