THE FIT OR FAT TARGET DIET: STILL THE PERFECT DIET

After all this time and with all the new diets that have come across our plate... we still believe in the Target Diet!

To achieve a perfect diet, you need obey only four rules:

1. Be sure to eat a balanced diet.
2. Select foods that are low in fat.
3. Select foods that are low in sugar.
4. Select foods that are high in fiber.

If you follow these rules, you needn't worry about cholesterol, saturated fats, vitamins, trace minerals, or most of today's other nutritional concerns. You don't even have to worry about preservatives or other additives in food. In short, observe the four basic rules, and the rest comes without asking.

Balancing the diet is the rule most often neglected, but it is the most important one, because it underlies every other nutritional consideration. We must eat a variety of foods in order to be certain that we get the full variety of nutrients. This seems like common sense to most of us, for we know that different foods provide different elements.

Therefore, be suspicious when claims are made about the extraordinary effects of any one food. Don't believe the articles that claim peanut butter cures depression or that gelatin stimulates nail growth. In fact, diets that emphasize one group of foods or just one food should be discarded immediately. No single food or group of foods contains everything we need.

So, taking the more level-headed approach, we should eat from a wide selection of foods. The idea has so much merit that one might be tempted to go to the opposite extreme. After all, if one aspirin is good, then two must be better; a person might try to eat every food that exists in order to not miss some elusive trace mineral. The idea gets pretty ridiculous when we imagine all the thousands of foods available in the world, including chocolate-covered ants, rattlesnake meat and weird vegetables that most of us have never heard of. It would not only be impossible to eat every food, but many foods should be left out because they do more harm than good.

Follow the four basic rules above: eat a variety of low fat, low sugar and high fiber foods that you enjoy and you will be on your way to a perfect diet.