Are diets out?

The South Beach Diet. The Abs Diet. The Atkins Diet. The Zone Diet. The Carb Lover's Diet. Crazy Sexy Diet. And trust me, the list goes on. Visit any bookstore to confirm this fact.

Border's alone offers almost 5,000 titles pertaining to this subject. But are we moving away from these better body bibles, heading more toward healthier eating in general? Are we learning to forgo the fads for a cleaner kitchen experience? More cooking at home, cooking fresh. Ultimately, are we finally starting to choose to just eat cleaner? One can hope. One can really, truly hope. We are, after all, a fairly unfit country. Back to Borders, where a search for "cookbooks" produced the following:

A little over 18,000 results. And yes, I realize that not all of these cookbooks will include healthy recipes, but a recipe is never set in stone. In my opinion, they're just guidelines meant to be played with. Meant to be healthy-fied. And with so many cooking blogs out there and an equal number of healthy living blogs as well, perhaps we're finally catching on to this healthy (clean) eating trend. Which, honestly, isn't a trend at all. It's just a way of life we should have embraced a long time ago.

Did you know that there are now more Subways in this world than there are McDonald's? I realize that Subway is still fast food, but your odds of building a complete meal at one of these joints are much better than if you were to visit The Golden Arches. It's true that McDonald's is still bringing in more moolah, but perhaps it's only a matter of time before that starts to change. We are, after all, starting to see a number of different restaurants addressing the nutrition aspect of the various items on their menus.

Let's go back to the concept of fad dieting for a second. While I don't endorse any one particular diet mentioned above (or anywhere, really) I do like to read up on the ways of eating that these diets are promoting. Some make a bit of sense, some just sound silly. But ultimately, we all require different things in our meals so it's not really safe to say that one diet is better than another. What works for you might not work for me. But I don't diet. I never have, and I never really will. I eat clean, that's my diet. I eat the healthiest meals I can, because if you throw a diet at me I will feel depraved and it will ultimately make me want more of whatever it is I cannot have. So when I can have it again, I will most likely overindulge. Thus erasing any changes my time of dieting may have produced. So it's very cyclical, at least in my opinion, because it can be very hard to maintain a diet for an extended period of time. But clean eating, eating right—I think it's a different story. It's much easier to eat healthy than it is to diet, because again—you don't have to deprive yourself. You just have to make the right choices. Eat the right portions, etc...etc.

And so I wonder: In this food-obsessed world, are we still following fad diets or are we just learning to eat better? Granted, we're not perfect (McDonald's Fruit and Maple Oatmeal). But perhaps we're getting there, thanks to the cooking trends and the food/healthy living blogging trends and the all-natural/local-type restaurant menus that are also quite trendy. And, of course, let's not forget the all-natural/local-type foods popping up on supermarket shelves. I consumed one such food in between clients on Friday, and it was rather tasty.

It was a Corazonas Cranberry Flax Oatmeal Square. Yum! (HINT: They can be found at Super Target...all hail Super Target, am I right?) Lots of tasty ingredients, not a lot of gunk. 180 calories, 40 from fat. Only 14 grams of sugar which, as you know if you eat granola bars often, is relatively reasonable.

Question: What's your opinion? Do currently follow a specific diet?