Although this country is in the middle of an obesity epidemic all of the leading diet companies have their own range of food products that are counterproductive. Well, long-term at least.

There are two main reasons why you shouldn’t fall into their marketing hype and include these kinds of products in your diet.

The first reason is the ingredients they contain, they are nothing more than branded processed foods with long lists of unhealthy ingredients including sugars. Mainstream diets tend to trade on calories. A calorie is not a calorie. Calories are a measurement of energy and not nutrients. Nutrient deficient calories from processed foods will keep you hungry and malnourished. This leads to eating more of the wrong types of calories.

The second reason is that many of the diet related products contain gluten. Gluten is a hard to digest protein found in wheat, spelt, rye, barley and oats. Grains raise blood sugar levels quickly in the same way as plain table sugar. Processed grains, particularly white bread and processed cereals, are a poor source of fibre and have a high glycaemic index, meaning they cause a quick spike in insulin. The insulin tells the body to stop breaking down fat for energy and excess sugar or food intake is then stored as fat. From a weight loss perspective I would say it is essential to eliminate gluten from the diet, even for individuals that doesn’t need to lose weight and just want to lower body fat percentage.

If this doesn’t deter you consider that many of the branded diet products are normally priced much higher compared to the same kind of products you can buy elsewhere.

It’s not how much you eat it’s what you eat!