Keto diet explored on popular Vox podcast

Want to hear a mainstream media’s take on the pros, cons, facts and fictions behind the keto diet? Then tune into Vox Media’s popular Today, Explained for its exploration of what people should know about the keto diet, who’s doing it, and why it has become so popular.

VOX prides itself on providing contextual information not usually found in traditional news sources. It has a number of podcasts, but the daily Today, Explained provides 20-minute explanations of trending news items in an entertaining, conversational way.

In honor of the food-focus of the American Thanksgiving week, the November 27th podcast “A tribe called keto,” featured host Sean Ramaswaram and reporter Julie Belluz delving into the surge of interest in keto eating. They note it is a culture and a lifestyle more than just a diet.

In general, the podcast coverage is fair and balanced, considering all the misinformation circulating about the keto diet these days. It talks about what people eat and don’t eat. It explains how followers stop burning glucose as their main energy source and get into a fat-burning state called ketosis.

In addition, Belluz covers the various health reasons why people are flocking to keto eating, including weight loss for obesity and blood sugar management for diabetes. It looks back at the diet’s 100-year history as a successful treatment for epilepsy, and looks forward to preliminary research underway for possible applications to cancer therapy.

However, regulars to the Diet Doctor site may be amused by a couple of the show’s bold assertions. The podcast says the diet is “anti-establishment” and largely “appeals to a market of men” who have been left out of traditional female-dominated weight loss programs. (Well, that would surprise our audience that is 75% female!)

Belluz characterizes the food is extreme, restrictive and dominated by meat. (Perhaps she hasn’t tried Diet Doctor’s huge array of delicious recipes, nor explored our vegetarian and vegan resources.)

Plus, she adds that the diet can be dangerously deficient in fiber — a point which a number of Diet Doctor articles and guides refute.

Vox is very popular, with reports of upwards of 33 million visits a month. Chances are some people will be intrigued by learning about keto, hopefully googling it to find Diet Doctor, the top-rated resource for sound, evidence-based information about the keto diet.

If you listened to the podcast, what did you think? Let us know in the comments. What would you have highlighted about the diet that they didn’t mention?

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