Diet books are famous for giving miracle qualities to certain foods, including the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Grapefruit diet and many other fad diets. This time, the Japanese have come up with the Morning Banana Diet, a variation on the original Banana Diet, which, simply, involves eating only bananas for breakfast in the morning... and, that's about it!

Simplicity is key
Exercise and eating only until you're almost full are recommendations, but not a must. The Morning Banana Diet is very simple, the rules are as follows:

Eat bananas for breakfast – uncooked, unfrozen and raw. You can have more than one but only eat until full!

Drink only water at mealtimes, the rest of the time drink low calorie drinks.

Eat your evening meal before 8pm – at 6pm preferably.

Do not eat dessert with any meal
One of the great points of the diet are that sweet snacks are allowed at 3pm – chocolate and biscuits are allowed, but no ice cream or starchy potato chips. Also, exercise is only recommended 'if you want to', the only advice is that walking should be done each day.

Japan – home of the healthy
Something to note is that this diet has taken off well in Japan, where the traditional daily diet is often viewed as much healthier than the western one. Giving the Morning Banana Diet a try may prove to be worth it however, and the founders recommend keeping a diet journal and making regular entries in their diet forum to keep motivated and in-touch with other dieters.

Morning Banana Diet Forum: http://morningbanana.com/community/

Banana boost
Really though, will it work? or is this a ploy to boost world banana sales? In 2003, the UK's Sun newspaper reported on the original Banana Diet, which recommends eating a filling banana and drinking a glass of water before every meal to curb hunger. Following claims of a 14-pound weight loss over 28 days, the British public went crazy for bananas, with major food retailers Tesco reporting 30% increase in banana sales!