© 2025 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Is It Time To End The 'Diet Debates'?

Comparing diets is something of a national pastime in America: pitting the Atkins Diet against the Paleo Diet against the South Beach Diet. It also extends into medical research.

But a provocative  new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association says researchers should stop comparing diets altogether.

Instead, it suggests researchers shift their focus to how to change behavior — forever.

Carey Goldberg, health reporter at WBUR and co-host of its Commonhealth blog, spoke to the lead author of the paper, Sherry Pagoto.

“We need to understand the key to adherence — and it does not appear to be the content of the diet,” Pagoto said. “It’s more of the context of the dieter.”

Guest

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

/

No matter what happens in Washington D.C., Kansas City needs KCUR. And KCUR needs you.

Our ability to report local news — accurate, independent and paywall-free — depends on you. Donate now to support fact-based news.