The Modern Diet Review by John Barban

The Modern Diet Review

I downloaded The Modern Diet Review by John Barban from The Fitness Black Book. The free download source is also located on The Fitness Black Book's website. The author, John Barban, maintains a blog where you can read more of his work. In his summary of the book Rusty Moore of TFBB says that Barban has worked successfully for some time in the fitness industry, a strike against him in my mind.

Barban breaks modern diets down into seven types: four of which can work, two of which are bad, and one is not yet evaluated. First, I will discuss John Barban's conclusion and then critique his description of each diet.

Barban says that all diets boil down to calories in minus calories out. He says that less processed foods can provide the most satisfaction [read nutrition?] per calorie, but this is a minor factor in comparison to your calorie deficit.

There are no such thing as ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. There is just food and how much of it you choose to eat.
Finding a diet style that helps you eat less total food without going insane is the key to lasting weight loss.

I completely disagree with this. I believe food quality and nutrition is the number one factor in health and consequently weight loss. The volume of food/calories is of secondary importance and the amount needed depends on food quality. While I agree with many of the things Barban says in this report, I cannot agree with his conclusion. I would encourage you to read this report, but take it with a grain of salt.

Diet categories

• Low fat (potentially good)
• Low carbohydrate (potentially good)
• Intermittent fasting (potentially good)
• Balanced nutrient ratios (potentially good)
• Cleansing/Detox (bad)
• Blood type (bad)
• Paleo (unknown)

Based upon Barban's findings low carbohydrate and low carbohydrate diets work but very poorly. They work by lowering the caloric intake and neither of them show significant weight loss after a year; however, low carb diets do show weight loss after three months and so are an improvement over low fat diets. I think both of these diets are starvation diets which only work as long as you are short of food through willpower or scarcity. Barban follows the standard party line that most fats are bad (saturated and trans) and that only unsaturated fats are good. I think this is incorrect based upon the lessons I have learned from the Weston A. Price Foundation and Eat Fat and Grow Slim. Animal fats are an essential part of your diet (although olive and coconut oil can replace them to a certain extent) and very healthy. You cannot eat too many of these healthy animal fats.

The intermittent fasting diet has been shown to work over the course of a year. I follow a combination of the Warrior Diet (a version of intermittent fasting) and Weston Price Foundation guidelines, so this is where I have the most experience. Barban approves of this method saying that intermittent fasting has been shown to maintain weight loss over the course of a year proving its effectiveness. He attributes this to calorie cutting because people will often skip another meal or day of food when they notice they are gaining weight. I disagree with him about intermittent fasting only working because of calorie deprivation. Ori Hofmekler has shown that metabolism increases with intermittent fasting so that you will lose weight even if your caloric intake remains constant.

John Barban's favorite is the balanced nutrient type diet because it trains you to eat a balanced diet (read: count calories/read nutrition labels) and prevents the need to eliminate any dietary group from your diet. Low fat and low carb diets fail because a dieter cannot give up eating foods he loves. This diet allows a reduction in calories without eliminating any foods. If you believe diets boil down to a calories in versus calories out equation, this is the best diet for you. I think this diet has potential but I would not favor it over intermittent fasting.

Cleansing and detox diets differ in that the former attempts to clean your intestinal tract while the latter tries to clean toxins from your body. Barban says that both of these lack scientific evidence and do not make sense logically. The intestinal tract can be viewed in videos and apparently most people do not have any intestinal buildup. I have not looked into this matter, so I will not comment on it. John then says that the concept of toxins is vaguely defined and that your body detoxes itself naturally and there is nothing you can do to aid the process. While I have not investigated detox diets, I disagree with Barban's conclusions. The liver and kidneys can obviously detoxify faster if they are healthy. They are filters and might need to get cleaned and rested from time to time. I don't know what a "toxin" is either but we get plenty of toxic substances that build up in our body like mercury in a Great Lakes fish. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that foods and drinks such as beet kvass can speed the rate of detoxification, but I am unsure if any scientific studies have investigated this.

John Barban calls the blood type diet an interesting idea with no basis in fact. People all over the world have different blood types and different diets and are healthy. Barban is probably correct about blood types, but I would guess that there is a genetic component to what makes a diet successful. On the whole, I would agree with Barban that the blood type diet does not work although I have not studied the matter thoroughly.

No studies have been conducted on the paleo diet, so Barban does not give a recommendation on this diet. He does say that the paleo diet seems to be a combination of the intermittent fasting and balanced nutrient diets.