(KCPW News) A faculty member at the University of Utah took part in a new diet ranking from U.S. News and World Report. Nutrition Clinic Director and Associate Professor of Nutrition Dr. Katherine Beals says the one that come out on top is the DASH diet, an eating plan that was initially created to help stop hypertension. She notes that it wasn’t created for weight loss.
“It was a diet to reduce blood pressure,” Beals said. “The notion being that if you eat lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and low-fat, non-fat dairy products, just by that eating pattern it tends to be very low in sodium and high in potassium and that seems to be beneficial for blood pressure.”
Beals was one of several panelists selected by the magazine to study 20 diets for six months. She says the goal was to help people find guidance on what will work for them in the long run.
Beals says the reason the DASH diet came out on top is because it is more a way of living instead of a “diet.”
“The difficult part in weight management isn’t losing the weight, it’s keeping the weight off,” Beals said. “That’s where the “fad” diets all fall short, because they’re so restrictive and difficult to follow that people can’t stay on them long-term.”
Other top diets in the study include the Mediterranean Diet, Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes and Weight Watchers.
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