Reasoned Consideration

The 'tl;dr' summary here is that basically, with relatively minor caveats, scientific studies generally increasingly seem to show low-carb diets to be either as good or better than alternatives, for both weight loss, and other health markers: [Added 2016] The effects of ketogenic dieting on skeletal muscle and fat mass 2014 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271639/ " Lean body mass increased to a greater extent in the VLCKD [ Very low carbohydrate (<5 %), high fat (>70 %) ketogenic diets ] ... as compared to the traditional group. Ultrasound determined muscle mass increased to a greater extent in the VLCKD group ... as compared to the traditional western group. Finally fat mass decreased to a greater extent in the VLCKD group " [Rauch et al, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2014;11(Suppl 1):P40] [Added 2015] Dietary Intervention for Overweight and Obese Adults: Comparison of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets. A Meta-...

It's possible for something to be a fad and   also happen to be correct . People who pride themselves on not 'following fads' sometimes blindly follow the wrong path instead. Or to put it another way, sometimes the 'sheeple' are right. If your ego is tied up in your ability to 'not follow the crowd', you may fail to follow the crowd when they happen to be going in the right direction. Forget about whether something is a fad or not - the only thing that matters is whether something is  correct  or not. What you need is a set of 'mental tools' to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas. This mentality seems to be a kind of 'inverse  argumentum ad populum ' - effectively believing something is false  because  it is popular. Sometimes the sheep are going in some particular direction simply because there's food, water or sanctuary from danger that way.

So who keeps sponsoring articles like this one? ("'Regular Women' In Lingerie Remind Us What Imperfect, Un-Photoshopped Bodies Look Like") McDonalds? KFC? Pizza Hut? Because who else benefits from trying to convince everyone that it's 'normal', 'natural' and 'beautiful' to have bodies damaged by a lifetime of junk food and neglect? Is modern junk food really, ultimately, less 'fake' and 'unnatural' than Photoshopped images? Obesity is responsible for over 100,000 deaths per year in the US [1]. By comparison, anorexia is responsible for an estimated 145 deaths per year in the US [2]. It's grossly irresponsible of organizations like Huffington Post to glorify obesity to our children - it's no stretch to suggest they are probably  killing people  with their promotion of an ideological viewpoint that seems to be based on a misguided idea that 'body image issues' pose a greater public health risk than obe...