What is the Sirtfood Diet? The way of eating believes in red wine and cocoa

Losing 7 pounds in seven days. Being encouraged to eat cocoa, and drink red wine and coffee. The Sirtfood Diet seems like it could be too good to be true – and there are some who caution that it is. 

Created by nutritionists Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten, who co-authored a book of the same name, the way of eating activates a family of proteins called sirtuins, or “skinny genes.” This, in turn, supposedly mimics the effects of exercise and fasting. (Though Goggins and Matten recommend performing “moderate activity” for half an hour five times per week.

Critics of the diet cite a lack of evidence that the program can accomplish what it promises. Board-certified physician nutrition specialist Dr. Melina Jampolis shuts down the notion of “skinny genes.” 

“They want to sell books, so they’re saying that there’s something magical about these sirtuin genes, that it activates your skinny genes,” she says. “There are no skinny genes. I mean, you couldn’t activate them. There are people who are metabolically born skinny and can’t gain weight.”

Though she thinks the diet is being oversold, she is a fan of encouraging people to eat more healthful foods. Here’s what you should know about the Sirtfood Diet. 

What is the Sirtfood Diet?

The plan pushes people toward certain foods without focusing on items that should be removed from one’s diet.

Goggins says when the sirtfoods are ingested “they turn on a recycling process in the body, and that clears out cellular waste (and) improves how our cell function. The consequence of this burns fat.”

“When somebody eats a diet rich in these types of foods, the outcome is similar to that same effect of exercise and fasting: a more energetic, leaner healthier you,” he says.

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What is the controversy?

“As far as the science behind the sirtuin proteins and that sort of thing, that’s where the gimmick kind of comes in,” Jampolis says. “The science isn’t there in humans to support some of their claims that it activates the ‘skinny gene’ and can boost metabolism and increase fat-burning.”

She predicts the plan will “likely not” fulfill every promise, but says “if people eat more of these foods, long-term they will be healthier.”

According to Goggins, “The Sirtfood Diet is simply bringing awareness to natures (sic) pharmacy; why plant foods are so good for us, and how certain ones are highest in specific nutrients that we know improve how our cells function. Simply,