Here’s why Keto should be canceled. Follow Jezebel’s Cancel Tournament to see what ultimately gets canceled
Food is truly a mystery for the ages, which is perhaps why this year has unearthed new diets based on old ways of eating before subsequent debunking these diets as being obscenely unhealthy. Yet out this tsunami of branded wellness diets is a single conquerer, the now thankfully vanquished keto diet.
Keto is cruel and unusual punishment on the body and the tastebuds—a regiment where dieters are banned from eating carbs, the best and most important food group. (If anyone thinks otherwise, we can fight about it.) Followers of the keto diet rave about how cutting carbs entirely and eating only proteins and fats result in extreme weight loss and a correctly functioning microbiome. They ignore gross and inconvenient evidence such as “keto flu” and funky genitals.
Nasty smelling junk should be grounds to cancel anything. But in reality, keto, like almost all of the other diet fads this year, used the concept of wellness to disguise the latest crash diet. The keto diet wasn’t even intended for mass consumption or weight loss. It came about as a way to help people diagnosed with epilepsy manage their seizures through diet and medication. It’s not even for every type of epilepsy patient; only a doctor familiar with a person’s seizure history can prescribe the keto diet. Much of the success of the keto diet is strictly anecdotal: It’s the flat tummy tea of the food pyramid. “You lack a ton of nutrients by adding so much fat and eliminating important foods,” wrote Caitlyn Edson, a New York-based registered dietician. “There’s just not enough research on it yet for people to do it safely. Plus, carbs are delicious.”
All forms of bread and noodles are the earth’s gift to human beings. Any diet that would seek to remove such a vital part of any meal should be globally shunned.