To me, these extreme diet plans just never made intuitive sense. We survived as omnivores and are constructed to eat a wide variety of foods. Why would you want to cut out completely one of the macronutrients or one of the food groups?
So, this thread, started two days ago and already at 4 pages, perfectly explains why these extreme diets become popular. We really don't know shit about how food affects the human body. Sure, we know we need it to live and that it fuels biological processes, but in terms of how it drives health, there isn't a lot of solid science. Every 10 - 15 years, what is considered conventional wisdom changes. One day dietary fat is the bad and the cause of weight gain, next it is good and has nothing to do with weight gain. One day excess protein can damage your kidneys and make you fat and kill you, next day there is no such thing as excess protein and the body doesn't store it as fat. One day being active is the key to maintaining goal weight, next day activity has absolutely nothing to do with maintaining weight it's strictly what you eat.
If we're lucky, we get 50 good years and 30 years after that will hopefully be okay if we did enough things right. Obviously, anyone that cares about being healthy and leading a healthy life is gonna take a look around at how what we supposedly "know" about diet constantly changes and be somewhat susceptible to exploring new things. Just because something has always been done one way doesn't mean it is the best way.
