The Unified Theory of Dieting

As a result of my recent foray into tree-felling, I’ve been forced to take a serious look at dieting.  And by serious, I mean at least five or more minutes of research.  What I was able to turn up was astounding.  Do you know there are actually too many diets out there to count?  Thankfully, Medical News Today put out a very informative article on the 8 most popular diets.  They are, in no particular order:

1. The Atkins Diet (Atkins Nutritional Approach)
2. The Zone
3. Vegetarian
4. Vegan
5. Weight Watchers
6. South Beach
7. Raw Food
8. Mediterranean

There are a lot of disparate opinions on the most healthy and effective way to lose weight.  My wife is currently on the Atkins path, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to reach the goal of a slimmer, healthier life.

It got me to thinking that there should be a clear and concise way to let a person compare diets.  This is the birth of the Unified Theory of Dieting.  I realize that I’ve only taken about eight of an innumerable amount of diets into account, but I’m just vain enough to make grand assertions on such a small sampling.  And don’t even think about posting a reply on my lack of statistical significance.  You go research another 22 diets if it really bothers you that much.

To further develop this idea, it helps to rank them based on similarities.

Insulin Control Diets

Atkins

The Zone

South Beach

Habit Control Diets

Weight Watchers

Mediterranean

Crazy As A Road Lizard Diets

Vegetarian

Vegan

Raw Food

After pondering the various ins and outs of these plans, I was able to come up with a medium that appeared constant across them all.  The unifying factor for these diets seems to be…the Cow.  The following segments detail how you can use a bovine to balance the merits of each plan:

Atkins Diet:  If you see a cow, you may cook it and eat it, so long as you don’t slap the meat between two slices of tasty bread.

The Zone:  If you see a cow, you may cook it and eat it, so long as you also eat the same amount of nuts and a slightly larger portion of whatever the cow was munching on before you killed it.

South Beach:  Find the skinniest cow you possibly can, cut all the remaining fat off of it, and then cook it and eat it.  If your skeletal cow was eating fairly low carb vegetables or grains, then you can help yourself to some of those too. 

Weight Watchers:  Don’t deny yourself the cow!  Just control how much of it you eat.  Then, go stand on a scale, in front of all your peers, once a week and confess how you don’t crave as much cow as you used to.

Mediterranean:  Ride your bicycle to the cow pasture where you can wander about, grazing on any plants, nuts, beans, or seeds you find.  Feel free to milk the cows you run across, but only eat a small portion of said cow.  Oh, and drink a lot of wine, too.

I have gone ahead and included the following Vegetarian diets though I feel that they are flawed in their very base assumptions.  My stance is that if we were not meant to eat animals, then they wouldn’t have been made of meat.

Vegetarian:  You may milk the cow, and you may eat whatever the cow is eating.

Vegan:  Do not touch the cow.  Just follow it and eat what it eats.

Raw Food: You may eat the cow, the grass, the trees, the rocks, or even the siding off of your house; so long as you don’t cook any of it (It’s easy to see how this group tends to skew toward Raw Vegan).

And that, my friend, sums up a unified comparison of the most popular diets. 

Bon appétit!