The Dukan Diet Fad....Just say NO!

As if we need another fad diet to sell to the ever expanding numbers of obese people in Australia. Just when you thought it was safe to grab another chocolate croissant, look there it is a diet from the French no less!

I can imagine a bunch of researchers and marketers sitting around a brain storming session thinking, ‘what will make this new diet more authentic?’….. hmmmm you know how French people are never fat… bingo!

France is full of the waif like petite ladies and thin hipped men. My parents travelled to France for their 30th wedding anniversary and after checking into a room where they could barely fit their suitcases and their bodies literally didn’t fit on the small bed; My Father in his limited French said to the concierge, “I’m sorry Sir but we booked the Honeymoon suite” to which he replied “but of course Monsieur that IS the honeymoon suite”. Let’s face it we are fatter and larger.

So can we get one thing straight here people, you can’t change your attitude to food and years of culinary blunders overnight. The French take meals very seriously they make time for meals, lots of time in fact. A five-hour family lunch can roll into a dinner where everyone will know what to cook with the leftovers. Wine will be consumed and desserts will be munched. In contrast we have become like the Yanks and eating to us is like an obsession, how many calories, what’s in that, oh no I can’t have dessert, and all this usually on the run. We are losing our respect for mealtime and it’s showing in our waistlines. The French also like many other European countries eat much more fresh produce than we do and actually reserve the creamy dishes they are famous for, for special occasions.

The new 'Dukan' diet is way too suspiciously phonetically close to 'Do Can'. The amount of cheese involved makes me want to vomit up my Baguette de Coulommiers I had for lunch. The diet takes the consumer through 4 stages, oh hang on I see a familiar Atkins style format:
The four phases
1 Induction
2 Ongoing weight loss
3 Pre-maintenance
4 Lifetime maintenance

EXACTLY THE SAME!

With the first three stages on not much more than oats and water so obviously you are going to lose a stack of weight. Then the fourth stage offers a whole new way of eating forever, wow amazing eating with consideration! Not exactly ground breaking stuff, but just normal health education that should be on every school curriculum.

Phase 4 of the diet also makes you promise never to use the escalators again. I can see it now by the end of the year half of Australia will be taking the stairs in their sketcher shape-ups carrying their McDukan Happy Meal. I’m glad they are taking the stairs as it means more room on the escalator for me.

And finally, the catch phrase for the diet is ‘5 million people can’t be wrong’. Well I’d ask you to question this if you are considering investing in yet another diet fad. At the height of the Atkins obsession over 35 Million were followers, right around the time Dr Atkins had a severe heart attack from clogged arteries.