The Keto Diet

While the keto diet can cater to people with specific dietary needs, its widespread popularity is only promoting a restrictive lifestyle with potentially harmful effects. 

Some believe changing the human body’s means of metabolizing, otherwise known as the keto diet, can improve one’s health as well as aid in weight loss. Seeing the positive effects the diet has had on epileptic children, cancer patients, and type 2 diabetics, supporters believe that the benefit of lowering carbohydrate intake serves as the justification for the general public to adhere to it as well. However, this diet change may not be suitable for the demographic that it wasn’t intended for, because one could assume that the massive influx of keto-converts don’t need to drastically lower their glucose levels when glucose is the main source of energy for the majority. Because of this major change in one’s lifestyle, adopting the keto diet has resulted in rapid weight loss compared to an all-inclusive diet, hence why it has become an appealing option to a society that is constantly conforming to beauty standards. The issue with this is that people will view the keto diet as any other fad or weight-loss program, perpetuating the idea that major food groups must be cut out in order to achieve a certain physique. Yes, the diet may help others with severe obesity and other health conditions, but there are plenty of alternatives to weight loss that don’t paint the false narrative that carbohydrates are bad.

Another perspective points out the several psychological and physiological effects that the keto diet can have on the general population. As the keto diet’s primary food groups are fat and protein, the surplus of them can inhibit organs such as the kidney and liver from operating properly.  The fact that the body’s vital organs aren’t able to keep up with this “healthy” way of eating may be a sign that humans aren’t meant to fuel off of ketone bodies. Additionally, the diet’s restriction of different food groups can result in nutrient deficiencies which can lead to more severe health complications. If this fad continues to gain popularity amongst the fitness community people may risk malnutrition if it guarantees a slimmer body. Sacrificing one’s own health for vanity isn’t a new concept, but a new emerging diet with the pretense of being part of a healthy lifestyle will continue to spread misinformation to the masses.

In conclusion, the keto diet is a diet curated for patients with specific illnesses, therefore it shouldn’t be coined as the new “one-size-fits-all” diet who aren’t in need of the specific benefits that the diet provides.