All around America, people are going crazy for the All-Lettuce Diet. You’ve no doubt heard the hype: By eating iceberg lettuce and nothing else for three meals a day, you save money, lose weight, and gain tons of extra free time that you would’ve otherwise spent cooking in the kitchen. By all appearances, it really does seem like the perfect diet. But according to researchers, there might actually be some drawbacks to eating nothing but lettuce.
To understand why the All-Lettuce Diet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you really need to dive into the science of human nutrition. In order for human beings to maintain good health, they need to incorporate various nutrients into their diets, such as carbohydrates, fats, fiber, minerals, proteins, vitamins, and water. That’s a lot of jargon to take in all at once, but it essentially means that the food you eat needs to contain a number of ingredients that actually aren’t found in lettuce.
According to research, the nutrients that iceberg lettuce contains are water, a little fiber, and vitamin K. Water and fiber are definitely very important, and vitamin K can help your blood clot in case you get wounded. But while those things are certainly good to have, by only eating lettuce you’re missing out on the nutrients that assist with blood regulation, cardiovascular health, skin health, muscle development, flexibility, bone strength, energy processing, pH regulation, neuromuscular activity, body temperature, physical exertion in general, the immune system, and memory. This makes you largely susceptible to scurvy, reduced brain weight, goiter, osteoporosis, immune failure, disorders of cell metabolism, many cancers, premature aging, diminished psychological health, cracking of skin, memory failure, cardiac arrhythmia, anemia, premature death, hypothyroidism, and corneal ulceration.
So, while subsisting exclusively on iceberg lettuce definitely has some big pluses, there are also some minuses. Since it’s so sweet and refreshing, you would think that lettuce’s great taste would overcompensate for its downsides, but unfortunately there’s no existing scientific consensus to support that notion. Trendy though it may be, the All-Lettuce Diet just isn’t as perfect as it seems.
