The BRAT diet is a 5-day diet from the 1990s that is supposed to assist people trying to lose weight. The diet consists of alternating five days of eating meat and vegetables with five days of beans, rice, and tomato. The belief is that this will help people lose weight faster than eating animal protein or carbs alone. But does the BRAT diet work? Let’s take a closer look!
The Bran and Rice Alliance for Treatment (BRAT) Diet is a structured diet that focuses on eating grains like rice, pasta, and bread, along with vegetables, fruits, milk, cottage cheese, and low-fat meat. This diet is so popular that there’s a BRAT Diet cookbook with thousands of recipes. However, the diet has its critics, so it might be a good idea to do a little research before applying BRAT Diet principles to your diet routine. The following are the benefits and risks you may get from taking the BRAT diet.
Benefits of the BRAT diet
Improving digestion
The BRAT diet is a nutritional diet for restoring and balancing intestinal flora. This is a diet that helps eliminate constipation and helps in eliminating diarrhea. The diet also includes a special food containing enzymes and probiotics. This diet consists of 2-3 servings of food per day, along with 6-8 glasses of water. The diet is generally seen as a short-term diet that requires 3-4 days to complete. This diet helps improve digestion, alleviate constipation and diarrhea, and also helps in reducing gas, bloating, and abdominal pain.
Gentler on the stomach
This diet is one of the oldest diets around, originating in Germany. It has several sub-plans, but in its purest form, it is a low carbohydrate diet where you eat only small amounts of meat, little fat, no grains, and lots of fresh vegetables. This diet is gentler on the stomach than other, more extreme diets and has a relatively low number of calories.
Reduced nausea
The brat diet, also known as a low-salt diet, is a diet that limits the amount of salt that you eat. While it may sound counterintuitive, this diet can actually help reduce your nausea, as salt stimulates stomach acid production that stimulates the nerves that make your stomach feel full. By limiting your salt intake, you don’t have to rely on your stomach to tell you when to eat. Instead, the healthy eating habits of the brat diet define your personal portion size.
Risk of taking BRAT diet
If you are taking the BRAT diet, you might encounter the following risks if you tolerate it for long.
Gastroenteritis (stomach flu)
Gastroenteritis (stomach flu) is one of the risks associated with eating a brat diet. As the name implies, gastroenteritis is a digestive illness that attacks the intestines. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and loss of appetite. People with diarrhea often are dehydrated and may have electrolyte imbalances, such as sodium and potassium deficiencies.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic condition that causes pain in the belly, cramping, bloating, gas, constipation, and diarrhea. There are a variety of things that could cause IBS, ranging from Genetics to stress and anxiety. The thing to remember is that IBS can be temporary or long-term and that there is no “cure” for it. There is no “cure” for IBS, but there are things you can do to make the symptoms less intense.
The Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast diet is a diet that was invented in the United States. This diet is for the first few weeks until the body gets used to consuming fewer calories. That said, it can also help if you have digestive troubles, constipation, diverticulosis, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis, or inflammatory bowel disease.