The Ice Diet

A brand new approach to weight loss has hit the news this week, known as ‘The Ice Diet’. Quite simply, eating ice burns calories, according to Dr. Brian Weiner.
The theory goes that frozen products like ice lollies don’t take into account the calories burned warming the icy food up to body temperature. “in a burst of insight”, Dr Weiner realised that one of his beloved ice treats would only have a net calorie amount of 72, rather than the 100 calories the packaging proclaimed, due to the energy needed by his body to warm up the ice.
This effect stimulates the metabolic rate and makes you lose weight, apparently, and Weiner recommends slurping 1 litre of crushed ice per day, on top of a healthy balanced diet.
And of course there are hoards of sceptics. About.com gives a good counter claim as to why this approach to dieting doesn’t work. A calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree. A gram of ice apparently needs 80 calorie’s worth of energy to melt to water, so to make 1 gram of ice into 1 gram of 37 degrees (body temperature), it would take 117 calories.
Unfortunately, this is all measured in calories. Check the nearest food packet to you now, and you will realise that it lists ‘calories’ as kcal. This is a kilocalorie, and is in fact 1,000 times larger than the calorie mentioned above that will heat the ice.
What this all means, so says About.com, is that this is not a very efficient weight loss method. Eating a pound of ice everyday will help you lose a pound of weight every two months or so assuming that the ice is heated directly by your metabolic rate, which it might not be.
Eating ice isn’t going to make you gain weight, and Weiner’s diet book is available for free in an electronic form from the ice diet website. Of all the fad diets it seems less extreme than some, and the only way to find out for sure is to try it out. Of course, a healthy balanced diet is a crucial part of any weight loss regime, and sticking to it will help you lose weight and become healthier anyway.