Main description:

Fad diets have influenced our society for hundreds of years. While they are heterogeneous in nature, they make many of the same promises: weight loss, fat burning, muscle building, flatter stomachs, improved gut health, clearer skin, and protection of animal rights and the environment. Not only are fad diets usually ineffective, they are often highly restrictive and associated with significant health risks. Furthermore, the practice of fad dieting dramatically increases one's risk of developing malnutrition and/or an eating disorder.

Adolescence is a period of rapid physical and socioemotional growth during which young people become more vulnerable to poor body image and low self-esteem, which may make adolescents particularly likely to adopt fad diets. However, the nutritional risk incurred could result in serious and potentially permanent impairment of physical and psychosocial development.

This book provides an overview of fad diets through the ages, highlighting what all fad diets have in common and how to recognize a fad diet. Readers will learn what science tells us about nutritional needs during adolescence for normal physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development, and the risks that may be incurred if a fad diet prevents an adolescent from meeting these needs. This book examines why adolescents may be particularly prone to fad dieting and why they may also have more to lose if they adopt them. Readers will explore factors that shape adolescent diet culture. This book makes specific recommendations for caring adults in the lives of adolescents, including interdisciplinary health care providers, teachers, coaches, trainers, parents and other caregivers, to steer adolescents away from fad diets and towards healthier alternatives for achieving their goals.

The initial chapters are didactic chapters that outline core material. Subsequent chapters use illustrative case examples to teach the reader how to screen adolescents for fad dieting, listen to the concerns that attracted them to the diet, engage them in a discussion about their goals, and collaborate with them to find a healthier path. All chapters conclude with discussion questions for further reflection.

Contents:

What are Fad Diets and How Might They Harm Adolescents?

- Prevalence and epidemiology of adolescent dieting

- Why do adolescents diet?

- What are the consequences of dieting?

- How can you identify a fad diet?

- What do fad diets promise?

- What are the risks of fad diets?

Fad Diets through the Ages

- Descriptions of different fad diets and categories of fad diets - liquid diets, micronutrient fads, one magic

food, one evil food, non-food substances

- Historical origins

- Associated risks

- Purported benefits

- Fad diets change over time, but what do they all have in common?

Adolescent Diet Culture: Where Does It Come From?

- Adolescence: a vulnerable developmental stage

- Media influences

- Family influences

- Peer influences

- Corporate influences

- Weight stigma/bias

- Poor-quality, inadequate, or inconsistent nutritional messaging from clinicians, schools, coaches/trainers, public health platforms

An Overview of Recommendations for Food, Fluid, and Activity in Adolescents

What Can We Do?

- Clinicians: Screen, Listen, Engage, Collaborate

- Motivational Interviewing

- Educators: use accurate resources, do NOT use BMI report cards or perform mandatory weigh-ins ; coordinate with health care providers.

- Provide information that adolescents and caregivers can use for effective decision-making

- Coaches and trainers: never suggest diets to adolescents, and never normalize amenorrhea.

- YOU ARE A ROLE MODEL: don't adopt fad diets yourself and do not suggest them to patients.

- Working with caregivers and shaping family culture around food and physical activity

Healthy Alternatives to Fad Diets: The Total Diet Approach

Fad Diets among Special Populations of Adolescents

* Athletes

* Youth in the performing arts

* LGBTQ+ youth

* Youth with autism

Clinical Cases