News You Can't Use: ‘Cotton-Ball Diet’ Rotten, Say Nutritionists

Fad diets are here to stay. Whether it's something sensible like only eating swine products, something wacky like combining exercise with balanced nutrition or something so wicked sexy I'm almost ready to go right now like the "Eat whatever you want...for three minutes...once a year" diet there's plenty of options and more on the way. In a land with a strategic soda reserve that would last for decades and what could uncharitably be called hippos of the, well, hungry variety, we need it.

Doctors and nutritionists are warning against what may be a new weight loss fad…the “cotton-ball diet.”

Leave it to so-called "experts" to find fault in consuming something that, strictly speaking, isn't edible.

Several Youtube videos have been popping up claiming it’s a good way to lose weight, reports MedicalDaily.com.

Did I read that in an accredited medical journal or see it in a two minute video filmed in a trailer's bathroom? The answer to that question actually may have some baring on the value of the health and lifestyle advice you just received.

In the videos, young girls girls soak cotton balls into orange juice or lemonade in order to add taste.

I'm not a big lemonade fan, but do you really think cotton wadding would improve the flavor?

The idea is to eat the cotton balls to limit the amount of food a person eats during the day.

Other strategies include gluing your mouth shut, having someone choke you unconscious whenever you're tempted or hooking all the pastries in the house to electrodes that will deliver power, behavior-shaping shocks.

Extreme dieters say the cotton expands in the stomach and tricks the body into thinking its full.

Let's take this thing to the EXTREME!!!!!!11111oneoneone Wooooo!!!! Cotton down the throat!!! Watch this radical skateboard stunt!!! Aw yeah! 23 Skiddoo!

“The problem being that taking the non-nutritive foods is you’re not getting the vitamins, the minerals, the calories, the proteins, the fats that our bodies need to survive off of,” manager of Fairwinds Eating Disorder Program, Kourtney Gordon, told WTSP. “So you can have a lot of growth and development issues, you can have complications of being malnourished.”

I never really thought of personal care items, or for that matter other objects like, say, tables, as "non-nutritive foods" but I certainly will from now on.

Cotton ball man says, "Hey kids, eating me isn't cool!"

Your usual ad-laden CBS site containing the original story, don't visit for any reason: http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2013/11/22/cotton-ball-diet-rotten-say-nutritionists/
 

Komment Korner  

Do the cotton balls make it a high fiber diet?

Kids today are so fat compared to yesteryear.

Can you buy cotton balls with the EBT card?

Wonder what Obama eats to fill HIS Kenyan skull?

In fact, there's a whole category out there called "actual food."

Shill Section  

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.