Diets used to be incredibly popular all over the Western world, but it seems those days are over. “Dieting is not a fashionable word these days,” says Susan Roberts, a professor of nutrition and psychiatry at Tufts University. “[Consumers] equate the word diet with deprivation, and they know deprivation doesn’t work.” A survey of 2,000 people released by the firm in October found that 94 percent of respondents no longer saw themselves as dieters. They were also disillusioned with the industry: 77 percent of the consumers surveyed said that diet products are not as healthy as they claim to be, and 61 percent said most diets are not actually healthy.

As Jean Fain, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychotherapist and author, has noted, programs like Weight Watchers typically are just “a short-term fix and conditional support for long-standing eating issues” and can even exacerbate them. But many people do still want to lose weight, and increasingly they’re hoping good nutrition and “healthy eating” will get them there, says R.J. Hottovy, a senior equity analyst with market research firm Morningstar. “Consumers are looking for a more holistic, more health and wellness approach,” he says. “The shift in food trends is toward fresher and more natural ingredients.”

But there’s a lot of disagreement over what a healthy, well-balanced meal looks like, and even the federal government isn’t sure what “natural” means. Increasingly consumers have to contend with terms like gluten-free, vegan and non-GMO in the grocery store. These and other restrictive notions of eating have been quick to catch on, but often don’t have consistent scientific evidence backing them up as healthful or effective for weight loss. In consequence, people don’t know what to think anymore,” she says. “I think what [consumers] want to do is lose weight by eating sensibly. That’s the holy grail of weight loss, and the companies say, ‘We’ll lock into that.’ ”

Some companies have simply changed their labels to include the words “No Preservatives”,”Gluten-Free” and “Non-GMO”. Susan Roberts, however, doesn’t see the products getting any healthier. “They can relabel them, but the meals are not any different. If you open a box of Lean Cuisine or something like that, you’ll see about a quarter cup of veggies in there. Is that an outstandingly healthy meal? By my standards, it’s not.” About all one can say is that fat-free, high-sugar products are out. (Edited version of an article on the NPR website).

My wife and I have approached the problem by cutting out sugar and puddings as far as possible, and counting carbohydrates (no more than 60 per meal for a man) and using Stevia for sweetener as and when. A lot of our time is spent examining the contents of food packaging to spot the total carbs, the recommended servings and the sugar content. But I am happy to (provisionally ) say that I am lighter and still have plenty of energy.