Story by Lexie Salamone
Experts agree that it’s important to put good things into your body in order to get good things out. People all around the world eat on different diets because of many different circumstances. But what different types of diets do people try?
Sophomore Cody Carmack has been on a vegetarian diet for seven months.
“I always had an idea of what treatment animals went through before slaughter, but then I saw a video that actually documented the happenings of slaughterhouses and I just felt I couldn’t continue eating meat knowing what I knew then,” said Carmack.
Carmack felt that it was easy to stop eating meat, but slightly difficult for her family to adjust.
In addition to diets, some people decide to go on cleanses in order to “detox” their bodies.
Special Education Para-Professional Star Cipolla went on a whole food cleanse for three weeks, eating strictly whole foods. She ate nothing processed or packaged and ate mostly fruits, vegetables and grains.
“Some friends of mine were doing it. It went along with a yoga program, too, where I do yoga, so it was just a class they were having and I mainly did it because there was a support group–there were a number of us who did it. For me to do it all by myself would have been very hard because they provided recipes, they provided shopping lists, they provided everything so it was pretty easy. It was expensive though,” said Cipolla.
Now, Cipolla physically cannot eat the foods that she avoided during her cleanse.
“I didn’t continue to cleanse but I did change my eating habits quite a bit. I went gluten free from it, and then I also stopped eating red meat from it. So when I reintroduced those things back to my diet after that, it made me sick,” Cipolla said.
Different diets become popular as people decide to go through a lifestyle change in order to lose weight or lower risks for certain diseases. Though many diets are popular, which one seems to be the best?
“As a registered dietitian it is not recommended to follow a diet, but rather the recommendation is to establish a healthy lifestyle. Establishing a healthy lifestyle means to recognize your relationship with food and understand the importance of nutrition, the importance of physical activity and your behavior with food,” said Jennifer Dampf, a Registered Dietitian at Hy-Vee.
At Hy-Vee, Dampf counsels customers on dietary needs, prepares and delivers presentations on various health and nutrition subjects, and researches and provides information on products in the Health Market.
“The most important thing to consider is to research and educate yourself from credible sources. Consider consulting a registered dietitian to help learn more. There is a lot of opportunity to be misinformed from blogs, etc…, that it is important to recognize that what might work from one individual will not work for yourself,” said Dampf.
Cipolla would recommend cleanses for anyone interested.
“It’s not like I was drinking some foreign whatever, or some people will do like a liquid cleanse, I’m sure there are all different kinds. But this was just basically eating how one should eat typically eat way back when before there were TV dinners and all these fast food restaurants,” said Cipolla.
