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Thursday, April 01, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

'Hate Your Food' diet lets you eat as much as you want of what you don't want

By Julia Sommerfeld, Seattle Times staff reporter

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...fooldiet01.html

Dig in! Enjoy as much as you like of this scrumptious squid and spinach salad, topped with lima beans and a wedge of liver paté — and garnished with a beautiful Brussels sprout. You won't gain an ounce. No fooling!

Adios, Atkins. Step aside, South Beach. Carbs are off the hook. A new diet craze is changing how and what Americans eat.

Seven weeks after hitting bookstore shelves, the best seller "Hate Your Food, Love Your Thighs" has established a new brand of weight-loss logic: Eat as much as you want, but only the foods you detest.

Devotees pile their plates high with once unpopular dishes such as liver, Brussels sprouts, tripe and tapioca — preferably all together. And, for the first time, many of them are no longer cleaning their plates.

Veteran dieter Ava Dupois had tried everything to shed her self-described "butt shelf." In the 1980s, she counted calories. In the '90s, she slashed fat grams. Last year, she banished all starches from her Issaquah rambler. But for every pound she lost, she eventually gained two.

She was skeptical when her husband gave her the book for Valentine's Day. "I saw the list of recommended foods in the table in the back of the book, and I thought there's no way I'm going to eat stuff like kidneys, salamanders and beets," she said. "Then I realized, that's the point!" She's since lost 48 pounds.

Word-of-mouth success stories such as Dupois' — plus sightings of newly svelte Anna Nicole Smith gagging on Cream of Wheat — have catapulted "Hate Your Food" to the No. 1 spot on The New York Times best-seller list, with 4 million copies flying off the shelves.

Publishers are scrambling to release knock-off book titles. Already climbing the charts is "The South U.K. Diet," which borrows from Britain's most reviled culinary contributions for suitably unpalatable recipes including black pudding (don't ask), lamb hearts and the curdled milky dessert known as junket.

Haggis Whopper on the menu

The popularity of gross-out diets forced T.G.I. Friday's and other restaurants to scrap their low-carb choices and retool their menus. Burger King now offers the Haggis Whopper, McDonald's has a junket sundae, and Subway boasts — what else? — a Vegemite sandwich.

The book's author, Dr. Skip Wainwright, a large-animal veterinarian from Yuma, Ariz., says he's not surprised by the book's skyrocketing popularity because his plan is a lifestyle, not a diet.

"I gave people one simple rule to live by: Foods you despise don't go to your thighs," he said. "It's a message that resonates."

The diet plan came about after Wainwright accidentally swapped his horse's favorite mix of carrots and apples for a bitter blend of chard and okra. To his surprise, the mare consumed less food and lost weight.

"It was like, Eureka! Why haven't we applied this to humans?" he explained on a recent "Dateline" special.

He conducted a two-week clinical trial with a grant from the Brussels Sprouts Growers Association. He asked six people to list their favorite and least-favorite foods and then locked them in isolation chambers. Half received an endless bounty of their favorite foods, including cake, French fries, nachos and Reese's peanut-butter cups; the other half received equal amounts of their least-desired foods including escargot (sans garlic and butter) and Spam.

He found that, on average, those in the first group gained 16 pounds over two weeks, while those in the second lost 11.

"It's a very individualized approach. If you hate asparagus, eat asparagus. If you are horrified by veal, bring it on," Wainwright said.

Three phases of weight loss

The book lays out the plan in three phases. The first 20 days are called the "induction phase," during which dieters can eat all they want, but only of the foods they really, really hate. This tricks the body's metabolism into a state called the "starvation zone," in which fat appears to melt like ice on a sunny day.

The next three months are the "ongoing weight-loss phase," where you still can eat all the foods you really, really hate, plus 10 grams each day of foods you only mildly dislike, like green peas and eggplant.

Finally, once you've reached your goal weight, you are in the "maintenance phase," in which you can treat yourself to 10 grams daily of foods you could take or leave, say, tofu or plain yogurt. "It's about shifting your mindset — food is not to be enjoyed, it is to be taken like foul-tasting medicine," Wainwright said.

The American Nutrition Association responded to the diet trend with a written statement: "It's healthy to consume gross foods in moderation, as part of a balanced diet."

Critics warn that people will regain the weight as soon as they stop following the diet. Wainwright dismisses the attack, responding, "I'm not telling them to go off the diet."

The mainstream medical community scoffs at the diet and asks, where's the hard science?

"I'll show you mine, if you show me yours," Wainwright retorted.

He's still waiting.

Julia Sommerfeld: 206-464-2708 or jsommerfeld~seattletimes.com. Happy April Fools' Day.