These days, if you’re a celebrity, anything bigger than a size zero is just not acceptable. Because of this, there are so many crazy and zany crash diets going round, that the celebrities start, and eventually they become popular in the general public too. A recent investigation suggests that quite a number of celebrities are fond of celebrity diets. This phenomenon may partially explain the current popularity of as people strive to emulate their idols. There are so many types of diets: Atkins, or low carbohydrate diets, GI diets, the cabbage soup diet, diet pill diet, and old fashioned starvation diets. Not all of these are the most healthy ways to lose weight, and your family doctor is unlikely to recommend them to you, but many of the celebrities will swear by them as successful ways to lose weight.

Jessica Alba, for example, swears by a diet of low carbohydrates – or what is more commonly known as the Atkins diet. Jessica has been following a strict low carb diet from the young age of twelve, just so she wouldn’t take after her rather overweight family. Her diet consists of vegetables, egg whites, lean meats and cottage cheese. For snacks, she chooses dried fruit, and for her sweet tooth, the occasional frozen yoghurt. To keep her svelte and world famous figure, Angelina Jolie follows a rather extreme high protein diet. Her usual foods consist of lean meats, and fish, and extreme amounts of water. She has also been known to eat crickets, bee larvae and cockroaches – all of these things have been found to be excellent sources of protein. Protein may be really good for us, but it is unlikely many people would go as far as Angelina Jolie to find good sources of it! Janet Jackson hit big time in the media spotlight in 2006 when she lost a dramatic amount of weight. Unlike some of us who aren’t quite so lucky, she has her own personal nutritionist who is constantly at hand to advise her on what to eat and what not to eat. Janet Jackson’s intense diet consisted of just 2 to 3 liquid meals a day, each one tailor made to contain all of the nutrients she needed. Along the lines of liquid meals, some celebrities are now returning to their roots, so to speak, and preferring to eat a jar of baby food instead of a conventional ‘adult’ meal. Two fans of the baby food diet are Reese Witherspoon and Marcia Cross, as they claim that good quality baby food is very tasty, and naturally is it very nutritional. Returning to an infantile state might not be everyone’s idea of a good and healthy meal, however.

These are just a small sample of the celebrities who are turning to radical and extreme measures to make sure that they keep their famous figures. Of course, these aren’t the only crazy diets out there… there’s probably just as many extremist diets as there are celebrities, each of them going in and out of fashion just as fast!

Why should it be remarkable to hear that a celebrity uses a particular form of weight loss diet? We do not normally read in the magazines and papers that a politician or a scientist has taken Atkins diet, for example. But there is intrinsic interest for us to read the story how a celebrity keep her figure slim with Atkins diet program. Yet, celebrity diets like Atkins diet are already well known and readily available without prescription. It is thus not the diet value alone that renders a medical treatment newsworthy. The combination of diets and celebrity seems crucial. This highlights the fact that lay people’s attitudes to celebrity diets differ from their attitudes towards other expert-recommended diets. In a sense, celebrity diets seem more responsive to fashion than do evidence-based diets, and celebrities should be more aware of their influence in these matters.