Emma Cowing: Faddy diets can put your health at rusk

'HAVE you ever," a friend inquired recently between forkfuls of pasta, "tried the baby food diet?" I had to confess I have not. Partly because I am not eight months old, and partly because - call me old-fashioned - I don't think strained carrots and a rusk constitutes a balanced meal.

We should not mock the baby food diet, however. For out there in dietland, where millions of pounds are made and lost on the flicker of a weighing scale or the whisper of a celebrity endorsement, the baby food diet (it is exactly what it sounds like - you eat nothing but jars of pureed peas for weeks on end, how it works in restaurants I have no idea) is big news, with magazines endorsing its promises and even Jennifer Aniston extolling its virtues.

Indeed, the baby food diet is almost as successful as the Dukan Diet, an extraordinary eating programme that this week becomes the subject of one of the more curious courtroom trials in French legal history.

The Dukan Diet, you see, is under fire. Despite being the weightloss weapon of choice for all three Middleton ladies - to the extent that its success was recently hailed by its French creator, Dr Pierre Dukan, as being down to two factors - "It works, and Carole Middleton" - others are not so keen. Particularly unkeen is Dr Jean-Michel Cohen, also, curiously, a French author of diet books, who recently described it as potentially lethal and responsible for bringing misery upon all those who adopt it. Dr Dukan has responded by suing him for libel.

It is certainly one of the more complex diets to have made their way on to the market in recent years. Those who do adopt it - there's even a name for them, they're called "Dukanians" - must follow a strict and laborious eating pattern that at first allows them to eat just 72 high protein foods such as fish and no-fat yoghurts, along with copious amounts of oat bran. Although they may introduce such annoyances as vegetables and carbohydrates later on, they must stick to having one protein-only day a week for the rest of their lives.

Cohen is not the only one with Dukan criticisms. Dr Boris Hansel, a metabolism and cardiovascular system specialist at the Piti-Salptrire hospital, in Paris, did not mince his words when recently asked about the programme.

"There are real risks," he told Le Parisien newspaper. "Infertility, sleep apnoea, high blood pressure, type-two diabetes, liver disease or cardiovascular problems. Following this diet is not harmless; it could cause real health problems."

Ouch. Such words, one would think, might have famous Dukanians including Jennifer Lopez, supermodel Gisele Bundchen and the brand new Duchess of Cambridge taking their slim frames straight down to the nearest cake shop. But chance, sadly, would be a fine thing.

Because the reason such faddy diets work - and have always worked - is not because they have found the secret to eternal skinniness, but because they know how to manipulate women. I have no doubt that the Dukan diet works. The pictures of a terrifyingly thin Duchess of Cambridge are testament to that. The question, however, is at what cost?But while the French lawyers argue the finer points of the cardiovascular impact of a high protein diet, it is worth remembering that the real danger of the Dukan Diet, and every other faddy diet on the market from the South Beach Diet to the Atkins, the Master Cleanse (where you consume nothing but lemonade with maple syrup and cayenne pepper for two weeks) to the baby food diet is its ability to ensnare women into diligent, restrictive and depressing eating patterns. Faddy diets are often just that - a fad - their posterbabes ridiculously beautiful women who were never overweight in the first place spouting their dedication to an eating plan that is - for the average woman - unsustainable, unworkable and often inedible.

Dr Cohen, himself a dietician, argues that dieting should be about calorie control - eat what you like, just don't eat too much of it. While that is unlikely on the baby food diet (probably why it works), it sounds a lot more appetising. And there's not as much as a rusk in sight.