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Diet food (or dietetic food) refers to any food or drink whose recipe has been altered in some way to make it part of a body modification diet. Although the usual intention is weight loss, sometimes the intention is to aid in gaining weight or muscle as in bodybuilding supplements.
Terminology
In addition to Diet other words or phrases are used to identify and describe these foods including Light or Lite, Low Calorie, Low Fat, No Fat, Fat Free, No Sugar, Sugar free, and Zero Calorie. In some areas use of these terms may be regulated by law. For example in the U.S. a product labelled low fat must not contain more than 3 grams of fat per serving; and to be labelled fat free it must contain less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving.*
Process
The process of making a diet version of a food usually requires finding an acceptable low calorie substitute for some high calorie ingredient. This can be as simple as replacing some or all of the food's sugar with a sugar substitute as is common with diet soft drinks such as Diet Coke. Replacing the sugar in a cooked food is more difficult because many sugar substitutes can not tolerate high heat, break down, and lose their sweetness. Fat is often reduced by replacing it with more sugar and possibly other ingredients. Fat substitutes, such as Olestra, have been developed but none have found wide acceptance in the marketplace.
Controversy
All Controversy surrounding diet foods are based on the suspicions that the products used to replace sugar are in fact more harmful than sugar itself. Also with low fat foods, the fat is often replaced with sugar, and the reduction in calorific value is small, if there is any.
See also
"Diet food"