Here Are the Top Diets for 2024

It’s the season for resolutions — and the annual “Best Diets” rankings from U.S. News & World Report.

For 2024, the Mediterranean diet once again took the top spot for best overall diet.

With its emphasis on intake of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and fish as well as on diet quality rather than a single nutrient or food group, the Mediterranean diet has now held that title for 7 consecutive years.

It also placed first in six of 10 other categories: best diet for diabetes, best heart-healthy diet, easiest diet to follow, best diet for bone and joint health, best family-friendly diet, and best diet for healthy eating.

The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which is known for fighting high blood pressure and preventing or controlling diabetes, again came in runner-up for best overall diet. It tied for second place last year with the Flexitarian diet, a semi-vegetarian diet that emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and plant-based protein; this year the Flexitarian diet took first place among the plant-based diets.

However, rounding out 2024’s top three was a contender that didn’t make it onto last year’s podium: the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet. The MIND diet combines elements of the DASH and Mediterranean diets, with a focus on foods that improve brain health to potentially lower risk of mental decline, U.S. News explained.

“Choosing a diet can be tough,” Gretel Schueller, managing editor of health at U.S. News, said in a statement. “Each person has unique health considerations and goals, and there are many diets out there to choose from — and it’s hard to know which ones will actually work best for you.”

The rankings relied on “input from nationally recognized medical and nutrition experts to determine which diets rise to the top for nutritional completeness, ease of following and promoting a healthy lifestyle for the long term,” Schueller said. Those 43 experts, including physicians, registered dietitian nutritionists, nutritional epidemiologists, and weight-loss researchers, evaluated the diets.

This year, a number of new diets were added to the roster for their consideration. Among them, the vegan diet of solely plant-based foods “cracked the top 10 in all categories except for best diet programs,” the outlet noted.

For the best overall diets list, the experts were presented 30 diets to be evaluated in 25 different combinations of four, and they were to choose a most and least recommended diet from each grouping, U.S. News stated of its methodology. Diets were then ranked based on the difference between the percentage of times each was chosen as the most recommended diet minus the percentage of times each was selected as the least recommended one. Diets that had greater positive difference were ranked higher.

Rankings in 10 other categories were determined by the total number of points a diet received based on how experts ranked them for a specific category, the outlet noted.

Below is a list of the top diets in each category, including two newcomers: the HMR program and vegan diet. The full list of rankings from U.S. News is available here.

Best Overall Diets

1. Mediterranean (overall score: 85.1%)
2. DASH (75.4%)
3. MIND (60.7%)

Best Weight-Loss Diets

1. WeightWatchers
2. Mediterranean
3. Volumetrics

Best Fast Weight-Loss Diets

1. Keto
2. Atkins
3. HMR program

Best Diets for Diabetes

1. Mediterranean
2. DASH
3. Flexitarian

Best Heart-Healthy Diets

1. Mediterranean
2. DASH
3. Ornish

Easiest Diets to Follow

1. Mediterranean
2. Flexitarian
3. DASH

Best Diets for Bone and Joint Health

1. Mediterranean
2. DASH
3. Flexitarian

Best Family-Friendly Diets

1. Mediterranean
2. Flexitarian
3. DASH

Best Diets for Healthy Eating

1. Mediterranean
2. Flexitarian
3. DASH

Best Plant-Based Diets

1. Flexitarian
2. Mediterranean
3. Vegan

Best Diet Programs

1. WeightWatchers
2. Mayo Clinic Diet
3. Noom

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