HYDERABAD: If you are a fitness freak, you must have heard of a million diet regimes that are popular on the internet -- there’s the Keto diet which advises people to consume high amount of fats, adequate protein and low carbs; then there is general motor diet where people only consume one kind of food each day; there’s also our own Veeramachaneni diet, developed by a Telugu man, which is basically nothing but a Keto diet with generous inclusion of coconut oil.
These diets promise weight loss without breaking much sweat. However, are they any good? Do they have any side effects? There are no conclusive answers to those questions online. Hemalatha, however, advises against following any such diet fads. There’s nothing better than the good old balanced diet that we have all been taught since childhood, she insists.
“The best diet is one which provides 55 per cent of total calories from cereals or millets, 30 per cent from visible and invisible fats like oils that we use for cooking and fats in food items, and 10-15 per cent from proteins,” she says.
34%men and 44% women in urban areas are obese
37.5% men and 29.4% women have hypertension
28% men and 3.3% women have type-II diabetes
80% NCDs can be prevented by adequate intake of fruits and vegetables