Taco Bell Diet

Just in time for the post-holiday gorge in front of the TV, Taco Bell is unleashing a weight loss advertisement campaign that is the first to compete with Subway’s Jared Fogle.

Meet Christine: A woman who lost 54 pounds in two years by choosing the low-fat “Fresco” menu items at Taco Bell in place of her old daily fast food choices.

The counterintuitive and controversial pitch that fast food can be good for weight loss won Subway billions of dollars over its competitors in 2000. The before and after footage of Fogle, who lost 245 pounds in a year, boosted Subway’s per store sales growth to seven times the industry average in 2000 and nearly doubled their previous year’s sales, according to “Market Busters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth,” published by the Harvard Business School Press.

But dieticians are on the fence about whether these campaigns ultimately hurt or help a nation where more than a third of meals are eaten in restaurants and more than a third of the population is obese.

“What I like is the availability of fast food items that are improved. Perfect is the enemy of good, and these offerings are pretty good,” said Dr. David Katz, director of Medical Studies in Public Health at Yale University. But, “I also suspect that most people hoping to ‘be’ Christine will be very disappointed, just as most Jared wannabes are. These are likely people who made a dramatic commitment to lifestyle change, and simply relied on a particular source of convenience food as part of their strategy. That doesn’t make that source of convenience food the solution!”

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