Would you like fries with that?

Pic from here.

There are few things more entertaining than the pseudo-science that gets trotted out every spring. Why spring? Because that's when the magical get-ready-for-summer diet stories start to appear.

We've seen them all, year after glorious year on A Current Affair: the Hallelujah diet (follow the Bible's diet principles); the wrong-hand diet (eat with your wrong hand! Your body will be so confused it simply won't know how to eat so won't!); and my personal favourite, the Atkins diet where, let me get this right, you just eat pork crackling?

It's not until a few summers have passed that the side effects of many of these diets hit the news: the Hallelujah diet will see you frequently tossed to the lions; the wrong-hand diet will teach you to be ambidextrous so you'll be twice as efficient at eating; and the Atkins diet will lead to certain and early death.

This year the focus is on carb-free diets. A new study has shown that a diet without carbs makes you dumber. As the SMH reports, "Popular low-carbohydrate diets may slim the waistline but they can also shrink the brain," and that's not something many of us can afford.

So in the interests of public safety I thought I'd put together a list of people who are obviously on a low carb diet and have clearly experienced significant brain-shrinkage and thus need help:

1. Any of the winners of the Darwin Award
2. Helen Demidenko
3. The safety officer at Chernobyl
4. Schapelle Corby
5. Any of the writers on the Home and Away team

If you ever meet any of these people, send them to the nearest trattoria, stat! Or else just throw them to the lions with the Hallelujah crowd.