Hollywood Cookie Diet: Don't Fall for Fake Food to Lose Weight

About the only positive things I can say about the much-talked about Hollywood Cookie Diet is that it allows people to conveniently lose weight on the run and it encourages you to fuel up four times before dinner, thereby warding off blood sugar swings --- well, you hope.

But, for the most part, I'm appalled by a diet that reveres and idolizes cookies to the tune of 4 of them a day.

For starters, in my opinion, most sugar addicts can't limit themselves to one cookie every few hours. Many people find it hard enough to conquer their carb habit as it is -- I'm afraid that substituting 2 meals (breakfast and lunch) and 2 snacks with one little 150-calorie cookie would make them feel horribly deprived.

What's more, I'm worried about people who fall prey to fake food like this to peel off the weight. (You won't find any real food like vegetables, fruits or legumes in this cookie concoction.)

Yes, the cookies do contain some added nutrients, but they just don't include ample vital minerals, vitamins, etc., which you get from real foods and which you desperately need while you diet.

Aren't people reading the nutrition facts on these Hollywood cookies? For instance, they contain enriched wheat flour (not whole wheat flour) and a variety of chemically created products such as the potentially unsafe soy protein isolate.

What's more, one little Hollywood cookie delivers a whallop of carbs -- 25 grams in all (or the equivalent of 6.25 tsp. of sugar, because that's how our bodies react to them). Admittedly, you do get 4 grams of beneficial fiber per piece.

What's more, you also get 8 grams -- or 2 teaspoons of sugar -- from crystalline fructose, sugar and raisins - in one cookie.

As if that's not enough, this so-called "first delicious way to lose weight" also includes the sugar alcohol maltitol syrup, which has been linked to gastrointestinal problems.

And the Hollywood Cookie contains the artificial sweetener sucralose (better known as Splenda®), which has spawned two books casting doubt on its safety, Splenda: Is It Safe or Not? by Dr. Janet Starr Hull and Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health by Dr. Joseph Mercola.

It's important for people to lose weight but come on, folks, do it with real food, please, for the sake of your health.

Comments

[susan]

Four cookies a day? Absolutely insane. Like many others have already said, I could eat that in under a couple of minutes. Matter of fact, I had two cookies this morning, and they weren't from Hollywood.

[Jeanie B]

Who are they kidding??? FOUR COOKIES A DAY????? I have never been able to eat less than four cookies in a couple of minutes. I actually don't have a weight problem, and I really have no clue why since I have been eating literally pounds of chocolate a week for YEARS -- but four cookies??? If one could get away with only eating four cookies a day and eating regular, nutritious meals, one would not need to "Diet"... I joined this blog because I have tried in vain most of my adult life to quit sugar (mainly chocolate- I can do very well without bread, rice, cake, cookies, and other sugars), but I can't understand how people can fall into traps like that. I guess someone just wanted to make a "quick buck", and there are plenty of people desperate enough to try anything...