Health and fitness series--3. Popular dietary fads: how should health professionals respond?

Many magazines and health books for lay people extol the virtues of diets that produce weight loss, often rapidly and using unconventional régimes. In this article a dietitian summarises the basic physiology of weight loss and discusses three such types of diet: food-combining; "detox"; and the Atkins or high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, including their physiological flaws and possible adverse side-effects.