The reasons are well-understood. It hasn’t taken off because eating nothing but potatoes seems extreme and weird to most people, and even less appealing than other diets
But people try lots of weird fad diets. Moreover popular wisdom seems to be capable of having different reactions to different fad diets- grapefruit diet is considered dangerous and you’ll regain the weight immediately anyway, but keto is considered to sometimes work if you can stick to it, which is pretty hard. It’s not clear to me keto started off obviously distinguishable from other fad diets of the time- but it worked for some people and was sustainable for some people, and so grew in prominence,
TBC I don’t think eating only potatoes is long term healthy. If the weak form of potato diet- where you eat some potatoes every day but are otherwise unrestricted- works, that is substantially easier to follow and less weird than a lot of popular diets people stay on for years.
I am highly skeptical because that’s the correct default stance to have towards monodiets claiming dramatic levels of weight loss, but if it worked in a healthy sustainable way I don’t expect weirdness to kill it.
The reasons are well-understood. It hasn’t taken off because eating nothing but potatoes seems extreme and weird to most people, and even less appealing than other diets
But people try lots of weird fad diets. Moreover popular wisdom seems to be capable of having different reactions to different fad diets- grapefruit diet is considered dangerous and you’ll regain the weight immediately anyway, but keto is considered to sometimes work if you can stick to it, which is pretty hard. It’s not clear to me keto started off obviously distinguishable from other fad diets of the time- but it worked for some people and was sustainable for some people, and so grew in prominence,
TBC I don’t think eating only potatoes is long term healthy. If the weak form of potato diet- where you eat some potatoes every day but are otherwise unrestricted- works, that is substantially easier to follow and less weird than a lot of popular diets people stay on for years.
I am highly skeptical because that’s the correct default stance to have towards monodiets claiming dramatic levels of weight loss, but if it worked in a healthy sustainable way I don’t expect weirdness to kill it.