Laughing at Aseem Malhotra

The British Dietetic Association has published a list of the Top Five Celeb Diets to Avoid in 2018 and it is no great surprise to see Aseem Malhotra's ridiculous Pioppi Diet make the cut.

...the authors may well be the only people in the history of the planet who have been to Italy and come back with a diet named after an Italian village that excludes pasta, rice and bread – but includes coconuts – perhaps because they have a low carb agenda. The suggestion that this Italian village should be associated with recipes for cauliflower base pizza and rice substitute made from grated cauliflower or anything made using coconut oil is ridiculous. It also uses potentially dangerous expressions like "clean meat" and encourages people to starve themselves for 24 hours at a time every week... The traditional Mediterranean diet is a healthy choice but this had been hijacked here. Fasting may help weight loss but the only reason their other advice is likely to help people lose weight is because it involves eating less food and calories.

Malhotra has been in meltdown ever since, frantically retweeting every nutter who thinks that Big Grain is out to kill them. In the food faddist equivalent of the bat-signal, he sent out an urgent request for back up to every diet guru on Twitter.

By the time the BBC covered the story, he had settled on the excuse that dietitians are stooges of the food industry (or that part of the food industry that sells carbohydrates)...

"One has to question the financial links and influence of various food companies on the BDA. In my view, they cannot be trusted as an independent source of dietary advice." 

Almost everybody in nutritional science has worked out that Malhotra is a fame hungry crackpot who should not be taken seriously (even Action On Sugar). In a sane world, his latest outburst would be enough to end his media career, but that may be too much to ask.

It's been a vintage week for loyal readers of this blog. First, Simon Chapman got rekt in the Australian senate, then Stanton Glantz was handed a lawsuit. In the meantime, we discovered that Jamie Oliver is unhappy and now Malhotra has been ridiculed by nutrition experts on the BBC.

What next? Will Public Health England's office burn down? Will Martin McKee develop smallpox? Will Deborah Arnott fall down a manhole? Anything seems possible.

The Pioppi Diet is currently available on Amazon for the knockdown price of £4.00.