You, my dear readers, may have frowned when you read the title of this diet, just as I did when I first heard about it. It pretty much sounds preposterous that these 3 main components of the diet, namely pasta, popcorn and chocolate, can in any way be included in a diet. It goes against everything nutritionists and the media has been telling us about what a healthy diet should consist of. This diet just sounds too good to be true.
The Pasta-Popcorn-Chocolate diet, also called The Chocolate diet, was invented by film maker and screen writer Lenny Neimark. His book, that was just 32 pages long, was published in 1999. A few years later in 2001 Sally Ann Voak a British journalist also wrote about the diet in her book “The Chocolate Diet“.
The diet was first catagorized as beeing just a silly hoax, but it quickly gained a lot of popularity – specially in 2007 when it became out-of-print. Despite of the controversial name and content, this diet was proven effective both by doctors and to a large degree by the fans.
The plan
According to the The Pasta-Popcorn-Chocolate Diet you must follow basically the same diet plan every day. You may alter the diet a little bit by using different dressings on your salads and pasta and by eating different fruits and vegetables.
Breakfast
For breakfast you may eat fresh fruit and shredded wheat with skimmed or non-fat milk and strawberries. The recommended fruits are apples, pears, grapes and oranges - remember no bananas. You are allowed to substitute the milk with fresh orange juice, if you want a change.
Forenoon snack
At the forenoon snack around 11 am you may eat sweet popcorn and fresh fruit.
Lunch
At lunch you may eat salad with low-calorie dressing, spaghetti, and pasta salad eg. with tomato sauce.
Afternoon Snack
At about 3 pm you may have a fruit smoothie, vegetable sticks and sweet popcorn. A recommended recepie for the smoothie consists of half a frozen banana, half a cup of frozen peaches, and half a cup of skimmed milk.
Dinner
For dinner you may eat steamed vegetables, salad, and fettuccini with tomato sauce.
Evening Snack
As an evening snack around 7 pm you may eat up to an ounce of chocolate (28.3 grams) and sweet popcorn.
The forbidden stuff
During the diet there are also food that should be avoided. You should not eat or drink alcoholic beverages, salt or sodium-rich foods, red meat, sugar, oil, nuts and seeds, high sugar or calorie fruits eg. bananas and figs, dairy products and caffeine.
For health reasons you should not keep this diet for more than a week. Inbetween the diet experiences there should be a break of at least 2 months.
So this week I will be trying out the famous Pasta-Popcorn-Chocolate diet, and I am very excited. If you have ever been on this diet or are interested in it, please write me a comment. Next week I will let you know how it all went..
Janni Thomsen
