This new food fad, which promises to help you reduce weight and inflammation, is on the rise, despite fears that it overly restricts eating options. Scrolling through her Pinterest boards sometime last summer, Himani Singh, a 27-year-old content writer in New Delhi, came across some pins about something she hadn’t heard of before: pegan recipes. Intrigued, she clicked on one … and was soon clicking on others: posts about the benefits of a pegan diet, pegan diet plans and pegan blender brownies. She realized she had stumbled upon a trend that combines elements of a paleo diet — which includes foods once consumed in the Paleolithic era, such as lean meats, fish, nuts and seeds — and a vegan diet, which focuses only on plant-based foods (and nothing animal-based). Singh had already been through a ketogenic, or keto diet, characterized by low-carbohydrate, high-fat food. She decided she was ready for her next diet. Singh, who self-identifies as a fitness fanatic, was soon boasting to her friends on WhatsApp about her new diet. She’s far from a lonely convert. When Dr. Mark Hyman, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, coined the term first in 2014 and in 2017 came out with a book titled Food: What the Heck Should I Eat? that proposed this diet to millions of his followers, some experts questioned his suggestions. But followers don’t listen to skeptics. |