"Why is the Zone diet so controversial?"
"Beats me!"
Extract from an interview with Dr. Barry Sears, by
Harper&Collins Publishers
Five cover promises
At first glance, Barry Sears' first published book "Enter The
Zone" has the following main points:
- Lose weight permanently
- Reset your genetic
code
- Prevent disease
- Achieve your maximum
physical performance
- Enhance your mental
productivity
These five statements should make us buy. I think I would buy if
only one of them were true, point three, preventing disease.
How can a diet not be controversial when it says it can
"prevent diseases"? But, to be fair, Dr Sears provides further
details of his ambiguous statement somewhere between the covers
of the bestseller. We find out that Zone diet can help to:
- prevent type II diabetes, as Zone diet is nothing more
than permanent and accurate insulin control through food we
ingest
- prevent cardiovascular diseases (cardiomyopathy,
arthritis, artherosclerosis, hypertension,
hypercholesterolemia)
- prevent or cure "mental diseases"
such as depression and alcoholism
- restore energy in
conditions such as CMS, PMS or even HIV infections
- prevent cancer development and make antibodies fight tumors
with greater success.
I really want to believe Zone can be that magic recipe that can
help me live a longer and healthier life, without too much
effort. But I expected some scientific proof for all these
promises. And what did I find instead? Some stories about people
who successfully solved their problems by following Zone diet,
and their everlasting gratitude to diet guru Barry Sears! I'm
sorry, but I'm not buying that.
Of course, there are some good aspects of the Zone diet. It
promotes healthy eating standards and gives some common-sense
advice. Somewhere, on the publishing road (more precisely with
"Omega RX Zone --- The miracle of high-dose fish oil"), Dr.
Sears advises us not to make any radical change in our dietary
program without consulting a trained physician.
But I think there are still many things that need to be proven
in the Zone. If it really does work the way it promises, mankind
should go beyond such problems as illness.