Is Dr. Barry Sears’ Zone diet a truly healthy diet?
The theory behind Barry Sears’ Zone Diet is that when you tightly control the balance of the macronutrients—protein, fat, and carbohydrates—your body produces the right kind of eicosanoids.
Eicosanoids are the body’s superhormones, and when you stimulate the production of the “good” ones your blood-sugar level stays at a healthy level. How do you get that to happen? By eating fewer carbohydrate-rich foods.
This is not, however, another Atkins in disguise. It is not, as some of its critics have claimed, a high-protein diet. I know, because this is one of the three diets I’ve tried. Also, anyone following The Zone will have a much lower fat intake than Atkins fans.
So, what is the proper balance of macronutrients according to Sears? Forty percent carbohydrates, thirty percent protein, thirty percent fat. In fact, 40-30-30 is another common name for this diet.
But is staying within these rigid boundaries really necessary for optimum health, as Sears claims?
How The Zone Diet fails
1. More rules. You must adhere to those percentages at every meal and snack. If you stray from them, whoa be unto you! Instead of counting calories, you count food “blocks.” A protein block is one ounce of meat or one egg; a carbohydrate block is one cup broccoli or ½ an apple or ¼ cup pasta; a fat block is ½ teaspoon oil.
2. Barry Sears uses nebulous evolutionary speculation to claim that The Zone is how we are genetically designed to eat. Please. No one really knows how our pre-historic ancestors ate. If anything, they more likely ate monomeals. If they found a buffalo, they would eat the whole thing for three days. If meat was scarce, they would fill up on roots. If they found a bush covered with berries, they would gorge themselves until their faces were covered in purple juice.
3. The claim that eicosanoids are the be-all and end-all of our health. In fact, critics of The Zone scoff at Sears’ claim that eicosanoids are as important as he makes them out to be. Furthermore, health is complicated, and many factors need to be taken into consideration when determining what causes disease.
4. The Zone is a very calorie-restrictive diet. When I decided to try The Zone Diet, I was doing it because I believe its claims that it would make me healthy, not because I wanted to lose weight. Having been chronically underweight, that was certainly not my goal.
However, given my protein requirements according to Sears’ theory, and making my meals and snacks add up in the correct proportions, I was only eating 1200 calories per day.
I’d try it for a week, I decided. If, at the end of seven days, I had lost even a fraction of a pound, I would end the experiment.
When I weighed myself a week later, I’d lost two pounds.
“Great,” you might be saying, “I want to lose weight.” Before you run out and buy a copy of Sears’ book, read on a bit further.
5. The Zone is a low-fat diet. During that week-long experiment, I was consuming 1 ½ teaspoons of oil (or its equivalent) per meal. That’s about 150 fat calories a day. Much less fat than our brains need to function at optimum levels, much less fat than a woman’s body needs to manufacture estrogen and other reproductive hormones at normal levels.
In addition, a moderate amount of saturated fat—practically banned by the diet—boosts the immune system. If you don’t consume enough, you are at higher risk for catching every virus that floats your way.
6. The diet doesn’t allow for individual nutritional needs. Like the Atkins diet, The Zone assumes that everyone does equally well with the prescribed amount of proteins, fats, and carbs, which is utterly false.
7. The diet restricts fruits. Because fruits contain sugar, they are high in carbohydrates, and quickly add up in the “carbohydrate block” category. Again, anyone who follows The Zone strictly misses out on the vital antioxidants and other phytochemicals that fruit provides for our bodies.
Well, I was a little easier on The Zone than on Atkins. The reason is simple: the Zone menu is healthier than Atkins’ in several ways.
Where The Zone Diet triumphs
- Like Dr. Atkins, Barry Sears encourages his readers to avoid a lot of starchy carbohydrates, thereby discouraging the consumption of refined grains.
- As he discourages the starchy carbs, Sears in turn advocates the consumption of an abundance of green vegetables. For example, my dinners would consist of three ounces of meat. Therefore, I needed three carbohydrate blocks. I could either eat three cups of cooked broccoli, or one cup of broccoli and a large vegetable salad (you need a lot of lettuce to make up one carbohydrate block!
- Even though it’s a calorie-restricted diet, I didn’t feel hungry between meals. So maybe there is something to having the right proportion of protein and carbohydrates, after all….
- The Zone has little room for trans fats, as Sears heavily encourages the consumption of monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil.
- The Zone eating lifestyle would probably work as a good temporary weight loss program for many people.
Of the diets I’ve covered in this series so far, it is probably the healthiest one. But the Zone Diet is not the best healthy diet choice, long term.
