A celebrity endorsement of a diet is not a good enough reason to begin following that diet. Many of us want to believe that our favorite actors, athletes, and musicians would never attach their names to diets or products that are unhealthy or that just don’t work, and thereby encourage fans to follow them. Unfortunately, however, this happens more often than you might suspect.
Celebrities are under an extraordinary amount of pressure to keep themselves in the limelight or risk being forgotten, with work and the money to fund their lifestyles no longer at their disposal. This does not mean that every celebrity who endorses a diet is only doing for the sake of publicity and the opportunity to keep themselves in the spotlight. But some celebrities do find that attaching themselves to diets is lucrative for publicity and added income. Not to mention the extravagant gift incentives that diet and weight-loss companies thrust in front of celebrities to entice endorsements out of them. If we were in their shoes, we might find it hard to pass up some of these incentives, too.
The real problems occur when certain celebrities, just like the rest of us, do not understand what a healthy diet is, and what it is not. It is a fact that most Americans do not truly understand how to make healthy food choices and how to eat healthy on a consistent basis. If we did, obesity might not be as rampant as it is in this country. The diet and weight-loss industry relies on our ignorance to continue fueling the market for even more questionable diet plans to be made available to the unwary consumer. They also recognize the marketing potential of and influence celebrities carry because of our fascination with and desire to mimic them. Using paid celebrities to make scripted testimonials about diets and weight-loss products has netted record-breaking sales and profits for the companies behind them.
Despite the litany of diet plans and weight-loss products sold each year, we keep getting fatter as a society, and our health continues to worsen. Why is this? Because in believing the celebrity hype and endorsements, we still fail miserably when it come to actually nurturing our bodies with healthy foods. We cannot, however, lay all the blame at the feet of the celebrity who endorses a certain diet or weight-loss product. Nor can we look to the diet and weight-loss industry to provide us with useful information about what a healthy diet consists of. They don’t want us to eat healthy — that would kill their very lucrative market.
The fact is, we have to take responsibility for our own health and the choices we make that can seriously affect our health. We need to stop being blind followers and instead become informed decision-makers.
There are reputable many resources where you can find information about healthy eating and ways to lose weight safely without putting your health at risk. Armed with this information, you will be able to spot — and avoid — diets that offer questionable advice and suggest using questionable products quickly. You will find that the real science behind losing weight and keeping it off is more about eating foods that have a high density of nutrients in them rather than controlling food portions, counting calories and fat, or even eliminating certain foods from your daily diet.
Eating high density nutrient foods do more than help you to slim down to a healthy weight and keep from gaining that unhealthy weight back. Foods with high densities of nutrients in them keeps the body supplied with the nutrients it needs to fuel its systems and to keep you at your healthiest
Diet plans that advocate eating nutrient rich foods and that do not support the severe restricting of calories, or suggest other unhealthy activities are fine to follow. That is given that you are choosing to do so as an informed consumer and not because you hear a paid celebrity say they do and you should to.
