Is The Sirtfood Diet For Real?

If you haven’t heard of the Sirtfood Diet yet, do not worry, these are the very early days of the craze and it is only a matter of time before your relatives start asking you if you heard of it and if it is truly as good as it sounds. Well, the Sirtfood diet is exactly what we will be talking about today, trying to get to the bottom of the claims and find out whether there is anything real to it.

The Sirtfood diet is the brainchild of two authors, Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten, who claim that their new diet can help people lose 7 pounds in 7 days, which is, and we’re sure you will agree, quite a claim. To be perfectly honest, such claims instantly make us skeptical and this time, it is no different. But, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

The idea behind the diet is a class of proteins called Sirtuins, or Sir2 proteins, which play an important role in a number of processes in the living tissue of various organisms (including humans). Explaining the roles that sirtuins play in living tissues would take too much time, space and expertise, but the gist of it is that these proteins influence cellular aging, inflammation, transcription and apoptosis (cell death). In addition to this, sirtuins have been identified as participants in alertness and energy efficiency during low-calorie situations, as well as circadian clocks and biogenesis in the mitochondria.

A study that is extremely interesting to the proponents of the sirtfood diet is the one where mice that had elevated levels of SIRT6 protein lived, on average, 15 percent longer than average mice. There have been some other studies researching these proteins, suggesting additional benefits.

But, why sirtuins and how do they play into the sirtfood diet? Well, according to the fathers of the diet, people can lose copious amounts of weight if they stick to foods that interact with sirtuins in the body, enhancing their effects, which are supposed to be very positive and beneficial. Of course, the diet would also involve drinking juices manufactured by the company belonging to the sirtfood diet people. These juices are supposed to activate sirtuins in one’s body.

One of the main reasons why this diet is gathering momentum among people who are looking to lose weight is that it does not prohibit eating any foods altogether. As a matter of fact, it actually promotes eating and drinking certain foods and beverages that are among people’s all-time favorites such as dark chocolate, red wine, prawns and salmon.

Moreover, the duo behind the Sirtfood Diet says that their diet is not about restrictions and preventing people from eating what they want. They also add that most of the healthiest and slimmest cultures from around the world eat the most sirtfoods.

Why do we have a feeling that every diet starts with the “healthiest peoples in the world eat a lot of X”?

In any case, what the duo does not tell you at first is that the Sirtfood diet will also involve a very low-calorie diet, especially for the first three days when you are allowed to consume only 1,000 calories per day (by the way, this is less than half of the recommended caloric intake). The following four days in the week, you are supposed to ingest only 1,500 calories (once again, less than recommended by doctors).

With such a restrictive caloric intake, there is really no secret to this diet. If you eat THAT little food, you are going to lose weight whether you eat sirtfoods or something totally different.

It goes without saying that we have very little love for a diet like this one. It is based on nothing else but a very low caloric intake, which is something doctors and other experts never recommend, as it can have dire consequences for the people who practice it and because it is not a viable long-term solution for weight loss.

If we had to give our judgment here and now, we would say that the Sirtfood diet is nothing more than another fad whose only goal is to separate you from your hard-earned money.

Oh, by the way, did we mention that the science behind it is very, very, very far-fetched and that it most likely (as in 99.99 percent) has no basis in reality?