Most popular diet plans in America

Keto diets were the most searched for by Americans in the last 12 months. The diet encourages low carbohydrate intake, but increases fat intake. It makes the body enter a ketosis state which burns fat and uses it as energy.

The diet plan is popular worldwide with an average of 156,000 searches taking place each month. Americans made up 33% of the searches with a substantial 52,000 searches.

The Mediterranean diet plan came in second with an average of 20,000 searches each month in the US. The diet doesn’t follow any strict rules, but encourages fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and healthy fats while restricting processed foods, added sugars and refined grains.

Though less than half the number of people searching for keto diets searched for Mediterranean diets, Americans made up for 77% of the worldwide 26,000 searches showing it’s substantially more popular in America than anywhere else.

Making up 65% of the worldwide average monthly searches of 23,000, Americans searched for diabetic diet plan 15,000 times each month.
Not too dissimilar to the Mediterranean diet, a diabetic diet requires a limit on refined grains and added sugars.

The second highest proportion of searches to come out of America was for the carnivore diet. 87% of the total 15,000 searches came from Americans.

The 13,000 Americans who searched for the diet would have found that a carnivore diet is extremely restrictive and only allows people to eat animal products like meat, fish, eggs and some dairy.

At the halfway mark we reach a military diet. The diet is one that actually has nothing to do with the military, and instead focuses on a three-day calorie deficit. It’s thought to be one that can help a person lose weight fast. 10,000 of the 16,000 monthly average searches came from Americans.

The dash diet was searched by an average of 10,000 people each month in the US; 71% of all searches. Standing for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, the dash diet is thought to help people reduce high blood pressure.

A 7-day-diet plan was searched for on an average of 32,000 times worldwide. Americans made up 28% of that with 9,000 searches coming from the US. Despite only 1,000 fewer searches compared to the dash diet, Americans made up a much smaller proportion of the 7-day-diet plan search due to a much higher worldwide search. This was the second most searched diet plan globally after the keto diet.

Up next is a low carb diet. Used as a blanket term for a range of diets that limit the carbohydrate intake, it came up in eighth place with just 7,500 Americans searching for it each month on average. Just under half the total worldwide search, 47% Americans would have found out that some of the other diet plans on our list, including the keto diet and Mediterranean diet, are included in the low carb bracket.

Arguably the most well-known low carb diet some decades ago, the Atkins diet came in at ninth. Named after Dr Robert C. Atkins, who wrote about weight loss in his best-selling book in 1972, the Atkins diet was searched for on average 6,800 times by Americans. This was 62% of the global 11,000 average searches.

Finally, bringing up the rear is the golo diet. The diet, created by a company and named after the motto “Go Lose Weight”, was searched for by an average of 6,600.

This was the highest proportion of American searches compared to any of the searches with just 6,800 searches world-wide, meaning that only 200 further searches for the golo diet came from the rest of the world.

A spokesperson for Total Shape said: “People are constantly trying to lose weight and keep it off, but it’s fascinating to see which diets are the most popular.

“Keto diets have been increasing in popularity in recent years so it’s interesting to see it doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon, both in the US and the rest of the world.

“The dash diet is an interesting development as well. While it’s not great so many people have high blood pressure – according to the CDC, nearly half of Amercian adults suffer from high blood pressure – it’s positive to see that so many are proactively looking for a diet to suit them.”

METHODOLOGY
Using Ahrefs to search “diet plan” in keywords and ensuring the location specified “United States”, matching terms was then used to find the top 10 most searched.