There’s a pesky rumor making the headlines – that the low-carb fad is dead. The analysts and surveys say so, therefore it must be true.

Ahem – let me be the first to confirm that the rumor is true – the "fad" is indeed dead.

I, for one, am glad we’re finally past the hype of a fad.

We can now move past the dollars and cents of products taken to market without sufficient research & development; go beyond the sales figures tied to products designed to replace one junk food with another without regard for health; and leave behind the fuzzy math marketing gimmick, better known as ‘net carbs.’

We can now define low-carb by the science instead of the marketing hype.

For too long, low-carb has been defined by how many products are on store shelves and how well they’re selling rather than the efficacy of low-carb diets on health; success measured in dollars and cents rather than pounds and inches; sales data measured instead of scientific data.

Science? Data? Evidence?   Yawn!

Okay, so the science isn’t as sexy as the marketing hype, but it is what is going to legitimize low-carb diets and controlled-carb nutrition in the long-term. After all, it was the science that propelled low-carb diets into the popular thinking when a Duke University study was released in the summer of 2002. Since that time, dozens of other studies have been published or are in progress – low-carb captured the attention of the scientific community and continues to be studied.

Unlike the mass media, there is no such thing as a fad amongst researchers and scientists – the data is either there or it isn’t. To date the dozens of studies published continue to show that low-carb diets are an effective way to lose weight and improve health markers.

It is this scientific evidence that must be used to develop new products in the future. The food industry has a big challenge in years to come – create products for those following a ‘carb aware lifestyle’ that are not only convenient and tasty, but healthy too!