Our nutrition class textbook contains a chapter covering the current, as of the book’s publishing date, fad diets. I cover this chapter after students have already learned about nutritional intake, the concepts of losing or putting-on weight, preferred nutritional requirements, plus how to make nutritional calculations. Armed with their new nutritional facts, I ask students to evaluate what I describe as fad diets.

Fad diets become popular and then lose their favor because of the lack of science-backed evidence. Photoshopped pictures of a celebrity’s face endorsing the product does not make the diet or product more truthful. This exercise helps students really get a grip on what they need to understand about dieting, weight loss, and how some meal plans can be somewhat hilarious. This has been a very impactful lesson for my students.

I assign them a fad diet to research and we do a positive and negative comparison. This lesson helps avoid a dry and stagnant lecture on a subject that has many opinions. Also, it is usually quite an amusing, almost funny conversation with the students.

I begin by asking students which fad diets they have heard of – this is not research-based. Generally, I hear many different types of diets as there are usually mixed generations in the class. I have 31 diets written on individual popsicle sticks. Each student draws one stick to see which diet they are responsible for researching. Instructors can remove sticks if there are fewer students in the class. I give them a handout to help direct their research and a predetermined amount of time to complete the activity.

After their research is complete, they write their information in bullet form on a whiteboard, plus anything else they think should be shared. At the end of the presentations, the class ranks the fad diets from worse to best. Many of these fads occurred before most of my students were born and I love to see the priceless look on their faces when I tell them, “Yes, people actually believed this!”

The overarching dieting lesson objective is to explain a diet’s success depends on expending more calories than consumed. 

Attachments:
Fad Diets Worksheet for Students
List of Fad Diets

Chef Jennifer M. Denlinger, PhD., CCC, CHEP, is the Culinary Management Program Department Chair at the Poinciana Campus of Valencia College. She is also the vice president of ACF’s Central Florida Chapter. Additionally, Chef Denlinger earned the 2020 Innovation Award, sponsored by CAFÉ and the Idaho Potato Commission, for a creative escape room based on safe food handling procedures. She also earned the 2021 Green Award sponsored by the United Soybean Board and was runner up in 2021 for the Postsecondary Education of the Year sponsored by Sysco Corporation.