Diet trends: The rise and fall of "hot diets" over the last 15+ years

Diet trends: The rise and fall of "hot diets" over the last 15+ years

8/12/21 8:00PM

By focusing on holistic wellness, WW is hoping to attach itself to a trend with a lot of longevity — unlike many of the diet trends that have come and gone in the last 20 years.

‍Easy come, easy go

‍One of the original popular diets, the Atkins diet, was still hugely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before fading to obscurity beyond 2004, per data from Google Search Trends. The paleolithic, or caveman diet, gained some notoriety in 2011-12, and the ketogenic (keto) diet was probably the most-searched for diet of the last decade, exploding in popularity thanks to endorsements from numerous celebrities, and others, on social media.

Of course, alongside the more extreme "buzzy" diets, there are some much bigger changes happening to our eating habits as well, with more and more people going gluten free, vegetarian or vegan. Tapping into those trends, while still appealing to the widest group of people possible, is going to be quite a challenge for WW — even with Oprah as a figurehead.

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