Greek Yogurt with Honey and Nuts is a simple, healthy dessert or snack any time of day. Forget fad diets and enjoy this calcium rich, high protein treat!

Fad diets have been around since time immemorial, I think. If I had a penny for every time someone has tried to give me ‘diet advice’! People the world over love commenting on diets, especially in the context of someone else.

Diets that are the fashion for a season or that ask you to restrict certain food groups are fad diets. Maybe they work in the short term, but they can leave you deficient in some critical nutrients, not to mention completely demoralized.

I had talked about diets for a healthy lifestyle earlier on this blog. A balanced diet that takes care of your specific nutritional needs based on your age and lifestyle is the only diet you should adopt.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some of the fad diets that have been prevalent across the world.

Popular (Fad) Diets

The Low Fat diet is perhaps the oldest. It was pretty popular in the 80s where people talked about cooking with 1 tsp oil. This later gave way to cooking with zero oil.

This diet did not consider that Ayurveda considers cow ghee to be healthy and uses it as a base for many medicines. Also, essential fats or ‘good fats’ were totally ignored by this diet.

The Atkins Diet urged people to eat meat, meat and more meat. People lost weight but developed hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol and cardio vascular disease. Why? Obviously because they were encouraged to eat all the bacon and eggs and steak they could lay their hands on.

The Cabbage Soup Diet or the GM Diet promises you will lose 5-10 pounds in a week. You will mostly eat a soup on this diet and then some tomatoes and bananas and some protein on later days. Yes, this may work in the short term, but it will lead to cravings that will have you bouncing back to your weight in a couple of weeks.

The SlimFast Diet, or similar, promotes replacing two meals with a shake. You are allowed to eat one balanced and sensible meal. This one is also good in the short term, and the fortified Slimfast shake gives you some nice energy boost. But you tend to eat much more than usual at the one meal you are allowed.

Heard of the apple diet? Yes, this one urges you to eat three apples a day.

Juice based diets or raw diets encourage eating only raw food.

Vegan diets ask you to shun dairy and animal products.

The latest hot fad is the Paleo Diet. Named after the Paleolithic Man or Age, this diet blames agriculture for all our health issues. Meat and certain vegetables feature on this diet, and lots of coconut! This diet was created for people with gluten allergies, but it seems like millions have adopted it anyway.

Nutrition Needs on a Diet

Most fad diets, or diets that ask you to do without a certain food group ultimately deprive you of something your body needs. A low carb diet deprives you of carbohydrates which provide ready energy. Vegan diets can lead to B12 and calcium deficiencies unless supplemented with pills.

Starch based diets obviously deprive you of protein which is the building block of muscles.

Unless you have allergies or medical conditions which necessitate dropping certain food items from your diet, the whole concept seems like a recipe for disaster.

Frequent dieting, especially fad dieting can lead to serious conditions like insulin insensitivity. It is like your body forgets how it was supposed to function, and it forgets how it is supposed to process certain ingredients.

Fad diets also result in the well known yo-yo effect where your weight lowers a bit for the short term but then bounces back over what it was. Do this often enough and you will end up with a considerably higher number on the scale than when you started.

Why honey, honey?

Honey, especially natural honey is supposed to have many health benefits. It is certainly a better alternative to white sugar.

I like using honey for natural moisturization in face packs, as a remedy for sore throat and also as a mild sweetener in my herbal tea.

The Mediterranean people are known for their longevity and honey is a big part of their diet.

The simplest possible snack or dessert using honey involves just mixing it in with some Greek Yogurt, nuts and fruit.

This is actually a nonrecipe but I am adding it here for anyone who wants to check it out.

Greek Yogurt with Honey and Fruit/Nuts – Recipe

I hope you are ready to smile with the prospect of devouring this sweet honey based treat. Getting stressed out is the worst thing you can do to your body, so keep a positive outlook and march on believing that it is all good.

Yes, it’s all good!

Please Note: I am not a medical or nutrition professional. These are just my opinions on the topic and should not be mistaken for ‘advice’.