The Program and Its Claims

• Harvey Diamond, co-author of "Fit for Life," claims that he lost 50 pounds within a month of being introduced to a Natural Hygiene diet. Natural Hygiene is a movement that promotes combining different types of foods, fasting, and avoiding medicine to naturally rid your body of disease. This movement inspired Diamond to create the Fit for Life diet.
  
  In his books, and through his online wellness center, Diamond makes various claims about how food combinations affect your body and your weight. He claims that combinations such as meat and potatoes, eggs and toast, and chicken and noodles contribute to early death. He claims that some foods "cleanse" the body while others "clog" it, that eggs rot in your digestive tract, and that refined sugars ferment and produce acids when eaten. Around 2005, Fit for Life began emphasizing genetic testing, which it claims exposes your own personal problem foods. Dieters are urged to avoid foods that their genetic profile deems problematic.
  
  Another keystone to the Fit for Life program is the order in which foods are consumed. Diamond instructs dieters to eat fruits and vegetables to cleanse the body, but cautions that fruit should never be eaten after or with any other food. He claims that eating fruit in combination with other foods blocks absorption and causes the fruit to ferment.
  
  

The Medical Reality

• The vast majority of the claims made by Harvey Diamond and the Fit for Life Center are not supported by scientific fact, and many of them are contradictory or misleading. One such claim is Diamond's assertion that food ferments in your digestive tract, and this fermentation is what causes obesity. As James J. Kenney, Ph.C., R.D. explains in his article "Fit For Life: Some Notes on the Book and Its Roots," "Actually, fruits contain pectin, which is fermented. If Diamond's theory that fermentation products cause obesity were correct, eating fruit would increase obesity rather than cure it!"
  
  The Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of the United States Congress, issued a report in 2006 urging consumers to be wary of DNA-based diets. An investigation led by Gregory Kurtz found that companies like Fit for Life, which advise dieters to avoid certain foods based on their genetic profile, rely on faulty science and often offer generic advice and overpriced nutritional supplements.
  
  Nutritional genomics, or the practice of creating nutritional programs based on genetics, is a field that some authorities believe might have potential. However, there is currently no reliable basis for any claims that your DNA determines what foods you should or should not eat.