Kathy Hilton has admitted to being tricked by an AI-generated diet that was falsely endorsed by celebrities.
The matriarch of the Hilton clan was appearing on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, explaining she’d had a “little problem” getting ready for the reunion episode of the show.
“I went on the Jell-O diet,” she admitted.
The 67-year-old explained Oprah Winfrey, Doctor Oz, Michelle Obama and Kelly Clarkson had all tried and praised the diet consisting of jelly, vinegar and bi-carb soda.
“It has messed up my whole entire system,” she admitted.
“I was so bloated I could not fit into anything.”
She told the cast she’d lost just under a kilo on the first day, but like many fad dieting trends, it came with an expected catch.
“They were lying to me. It was all AI,” she said.
Social media was as shocked as the cast at the admission, taking to the comment section to fondly poke fun at Hilton behaving like a “Facebook adult”.
“My mum fell for an AI Oprah diet also,” admitted one commenter.
“She’s dead serious, too,” another observed.
A third added: “Kathy is everyone’s grandma that you can’t keep off the internet reading crazy things. I love her.”
The diet itself is a chaos agent on the body, which is likely why Hilton felt so impacted.
Sydney-based Rebekah Raymond, StretchLab dietitian, says the ingredients of the diet on their own are beneficial, but the combination has “got bloating written all over it”.
“The combination of the Jell-O swelling and then the bicarb soda creating these carbon dioxide bubbles, and also the sodium drawing water into the gut. It’s just the perfect combination for bloating and swelling,” Ms Raymond told news.com.au.
She says any weight lost through methods such as the one Hilton tried, is a false sense of hope.
“The first few kilos are going to be inflammation and water that’s held on by the body… then to lose fat and maintain that, then it’s got to be based on a wholefoods diet and getting rid of inflammatory foods,” she said.
It can also have an impact on our overall health if these diets win our devotion for a considerable portion of time.
“If we’re stripping things out of the diet and just limiting the diet to some funny, small, strange combination, then nutritional deficiency can kick in, too. That’ll affect our moods, our energy, our brain power, our hormones. So, yeah, it can be dangerous,” she explained.
Hilton isn’t the only person to have fallen into the trap, with the trend of people turning to AI for dieting information on the rise.
It’s a movement that dietitians are keen to see come to a halt.
Veronika Larisova, from Chief Nutrition, warns that ChatGPT and other AI tools are not trustworthy sources for dietary advice.
“Don’t ask ChatGPT for any medical advice. It’s a good, fun tool for basic questions like how many calories are in an egg, but I would strongly discourage using it for medical advice or anything related to science,” Ms Larisova told news.com.au.
“I caught ChatGPT several times making up facts, scientific studies, and even study results.”