Thursday, February 19, 2009

Asa Banana Diet

Finally, the lowly banana has come into its own!

Though I've only just heard about it recently from a friend, apparently the 'asa banana diet', or 'morning banana diet' has been all the rage here in Japan for a few months. It started to take hold after a Mixi (a huge social networking site here) user published his success, and then the diet was picked up by mass media.

For this diet, you simply have a banana (or as many bananas as you want) for breakfast, then eat lunch and dinner as usual, but without any dessert.

It's a hugely popular trend, which likely means it's going to falter and give way to yet another new diet trend very soon, if it hasn't already.

I sort of want the fad to end as I noticed that the banana supply at my local supermarket is weak, and the prices have gone up; though I don't plan to try the diet myself, I do love banana sandwiches!

When I Googled 'banana diet', I got 123,000 hits. This article from Time was the top hit:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1850454,00.html

1 comment:

bernicky said...

Well as with all things this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Bananas are great food, but they are also very high in potassium. Potassium and the heart do not particularly like each other that much. In small amounts it is fine but the more potassium the less the heart likes it. I wouldn't be surprised to see the rate of heart attack go up especially among those at risk trying this diet.