Dieting makes you fatter
Diets set you up for failure, says a new book, which claims the only way to stay slim is to wean yourself off sugar In recent years there has been a considerable backlash against the diet industry. The fact that we pour around £2bn into its coffers each year, while our waistlines continue to swell, has not gone unnoticed. Nor has the fact that many of those who profit from the industry are also peddling the very foods blamed for causing obesity. And yet, every January, masses of intelligent people will fall hook, line and sinker for the claims of some aggressive new weight-loss manifesto. And so a timely title among 2014's crop of eating plans is Why Diets Fail, jointly penned by John Talbott (who usually writes about finance) and Nicole Avena, a neuroscientist working on the controversial hypothesis that sugar is clinically addictive. The pair teamed up after Talbott kicked his sugar habit and felt he had found a permanent "magic cure" for not only being overweight,...
