If You Look Flabby and You Feel Overweight and You Wanna Lose a Couple of Stone…

…Eric Husman proposes the Alphabet Diet. "I suggest that if you picked five letters at random from the alphabet and confine your diet to foods whose name does not contain those letters, you will see the same initial effects as the Atkins or any other diet," he writes. "If the diet ceases to be effective, pick 5 new letters."

Marginal Revolution has the full explanation.

Comments

[jc]

Make sure you pick a, e, i, o, and u.

[Ball of Confusion]

That wouldn't be picking them *at random*.

I don't know whether it holds any real water, but it's at least a clever way of looking at diets. However, I don't think the 5-letter scheme meets the author's own criteria -- it'd be way too easy to game the system immediately, hence rendering it ineffective. Now if somebody ELSE picked 5 letters for you and simply told you "yes" or "no" as you picked up each item in the cafeteria line, then you're onto something.

[c]

"Well, I'm not allowed to eat zucchini, so I guess that was a courgette."

[Swamp Justice]

This modular, "open source" diet plan could create a valuable market of people selling the most effective five letters! And different sets of five letters might have different benefits to different eaters, depending on their genetics or preexisting health conditions.

[tarylcabot]

Is the title a play on "Skin & bones" from the Kinks "Muswell Hillbilies"?

Have enjoyed Hit&Run's play on Sex Pistols & Graham Parker lyrics & this title rank a faint bell from college when I used to own "Arthur" - guessed the wrong Kinks album at first.

[Jesse Walker]

Tarylcabot wins the cigar.

[Ruthless]

Anyone needing to lose some stones has been trying to pack too much calcium into their diets.

[Eric H]

I am the original author. I admit that the AD is easy to game, but the point was that any diet that forces you to change your eating habits will be effective for a while, but only until you learn to increase your calorie intake within the rules. As to whether picking letters is random or not, obviously I would do something like write a letter on each of 26 cards and draw from a hat.

The other part that Tyler didn't put up at Marginal Revolution was: woe unto he who accidentally picks ETAOS. As far as I can tell, your diet would be confined to zucchini and bugs. Good luck with that.