Keto’s Rankings Show Support Among Dietitians

A 2018 poll of 2,000 retail dietitians found the keto diet to be the third most popular this year, just behind clean eating and plant-based diets. The popularity of the ketogenic diet is matched only by its controversy. On one side are the pro-low-carb dieters with a developing body of research demonstrating the wide-ranging benefits it can have beyond simple weight loss, including disease prevention. On the other is a crowd of skeptics, symbolized by US News and World Report? The media company criticized the difficulty of the keto diet, as well as its nutritional completeness, saying, “Any diet that recommends snacking on bacon can’t be taken seriously as a health-promoting way to eat.”1

Popularity with Dietitians

Fortunately, potential dieters have a variety of experts and detailed evaluations to turn to in determining whether keto is well-suited to them. Indeed, keto seems to incorporate many of the most popular “superfoods,” such as avocados, nuts, and high-fat Greek yogurts, and as such intuitively suits many people’s transition away from sugar and processed foods.2

What, then, are the people at US News and World Report missing, as opposed to the retail and registered dietitians whose jobs it is to prescribe and sell people the best diets? Insofar as the difficulty of the keto diet informed this ranking, few who advocate the keto diet would deny its rigorousness.

Keto’s Revolutionary Approach to Diet

The dieticians ranking keto among the top diets of the year do the same kind of work, and this is the difference in the significance of their rankings versus those of US News and World Report. In exactly the same way that your body and brain need time to adjust to the keto diet, the opponents of keto who scoff at snacking on bacon are working with decades of nutritional common sense and guidelines (much of which was heavily influenced by the interventions and “studies” done by the sugar industry) that advocate a high-carb, low-fat diet. The unique controversy surrounding keto, and the reason for harsh reactions like these, stems from this revolutionary take on diet, one that completely upends conventional wisdom. While anyone interested in the keto diet should do some research for themselves to see if it’s right for them, it’s nonetheless important to consider reports like these in the right context.