The Zone diet is a diet popularized in books by biochemist Barry Sears. It advocates balancing protein and carbohydrate in 3:4 ratios. It is not primarily a weight-loss "diet", though it can be used quite successfully for that purpose.

Gary Taubes, an investigative science journalist whose new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories attacks the idea of low-fat, high-exercise dieting as scientifically unsound and unsupported by empirical research, tracing the idea back to a nutritional fad that arose 50 years ago.

There are diet plans and then there are some diet plans. Some will throw medical mumbo-jumbo at consumers, some will fake research, some take a leap of faith to conclusions, and some just ride on the coat tail of real research.Of all these, I found the following diets the worst and some crazy ideas as a diet. Call them fads, call them snake oil