Food Faddism

Posted on November 12, 2007 in Diet-Health

Dietary fad is a common term that is understandable. Food faddism is based on an exaggerated trust in certain style of food to attain health. It also helps to recognize the general diet trends in people. Also certain specialties are attributed to certain foods with a belief that they cure particular diseases. Another fad is not taking certain food types because they contain ingredients not good for health.

What it means?
Dietary Fraud is a term that makes us look around food product promoters with some doubt in mind. US Food and Drug Administration uses the term ‘Nutrition Fraud’ to describe the abuse done by misleading food product promotions.

Throughout history the superstitions of some cultures have claimed healing or harmful properties to certain foods. Many of these superstitions actually exist now, even in the day of huge development in nutritional science. Dietary Fraud exists today not just because of culture, but because the masses are not educated about the way food should be taken. Also the few who have heard about it do not tend to accept the change because of mental inertia that all of humans have.

History of Food Faddism
By studying the diet trends in people it is found that the first signs of food faddism were found in Britain. Whatever the starting place of food fraud may be, it is found true that the more processed the food the lesser nutrient value it will have. But it doesn’t mean that processed food has to be eliminated completely from diet.

One of the most prevalent dietary fads is that some groups also believed that after cooking and mixing with other foods, any food becomes toxic and will not be digested easily. There is hardly any fact in this, and research not only has disproved the theory, but also proved that cooked food is way better than uncooked food.

What is Happening Now?
Growing interest in nutrition coupled with growing concern about new kinds of diseases has made people believe anything that sounds new. But the amount of information has increased to the extent that it also confuses customers.

Therefore many countries including the US, UK, Canada and India have made specific rules about the way food products are promoted. Special care is taken by the Governments and many NGOs to see that false promotional claims made on product labels be considered unlawful. Such organizations work in tandem with one another to see that biased marketing is kept in check to help willing buyers.

However hyped, and sometimes misleading, marketing is done through various mass media channels, which is protected under certain rights the countries have provided. This kind of marketing exaggerates the use of certain ingredients (or the products themselves) to bring about dramatic or sensational results. However one can avoid getting trapped into such marketing gimmick by carefully studying or going through the products before buying them.

Being aware of what kind of diseases spread through deficiency of what foods also helps.

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