Keto Diet Ranked Worst For Healthy Eating

Today is a new day, plump to the point of bursting with opportunity. A whole world of positive life changes are dangling precariously from the edge of the horizon, just waiting for you to grab hold of them and pull them in for a bear hug made out of personal development. Now comes the hard part: picking which self-actualization row to hoe.

With so many sure-fire ways to go from dad bod to rad bod, it can be difficult to decide which fad diet is going to permanently and irrevocably transform your body into a monument to Atlas, so here's the good news: you can at least narrow the field through the process of elimination. This week, U.S. News and World Report posted their annual list of the best and worst diets making the rounds, and the "keto diet" came in dead last.

The list takes several factors into account, including "nutritional completeness" and the long and short term potential for weight loss. High-fat/low-carb combinations like the keto diet had a decent score for short-term weight loss, but ate it in other categories, especially on account of the difficulties of continuing them over long periods of time.

Other diets with poor marks include the "raw food diet," which implores users to cut out foods cooked above a certain temperature, and the Whole30 diet, which nutritionists file in the "totally bonkers" category, warning that it can lead to severe heart damage.

For healthier options, this year's winners were variations on the Mediterranean diet, which zeroes in on consuming healthy fats from foods like salmon and avocados and could lead to lower cholesterol. The report also recommended "flexitarian" eating habits: consuming mostly plant-based meals with occasional high quality animal products in moderation. Mysteriously absent from the list was any mention of your sassy aunt's "calories don't count after 5 PM" diet.