Overweight and obesity rates might be leveling off, but as more nations become more developed, waist expansion is spreading worldwide. In fact, the global girth rate appears to be untouched by an equally epidemic and persistent obsession with diets—diets of all kinds and of all claims.
Americans, especially, have never given up chasing diets, generally the same ones with different names. For example, the low-carb diet, originally conceived in the 1800s, has undergone many reincarnations, morphing into The Drinking Man’s Diet in the 60s, the Atkins Diet in the 70s, the South Beach Diet, the Paleo Diet, and now the ketogenic diet.