vegetables-2977891_1920
The fruit and vegetable-heavy DASH diet retained its eighth consecutive spot atop the year's U.S. News and World Report list of best diets. Pixabay

The DASH diet retained its eighth consecutive spot atop the year's latest U.S. News and World Report list of best diets. This year, for the first time, the "Mediterranean Diet" stepped up and tied the health expert reviews for most effective, healthiest and safest diets moving from 2017 into 2018.

One of the Dash dietary benefits, its simplicity, is a blood pressure-lowering plan of increasing vegetable, fruit and low-fat dairy intake, while dramatically reducing one’s intake of salty and high saturated fat foods. The plan uses a daily caloric intake gauge between 1,600 to 3,100 dietary calories. The Dietary approaches to stop hypertension, or DASH diet, is a fruit and vegetable-heavy dietary pattern promoted in part by several U.S. federal health agencies. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute recommends specific food choices to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure rates while losing relatively little overall weight.

The DASH diet's endorsement by the USDA is given support from the the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The expert panel for the U.S. News and World Report's "Best Diets" list evaluated 40 of the top dieting trends of the past year.

"What I love about both the DASH and Mediterranean diets is that they offer guiding principles for eating, like eating more fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, fish, legumes, nuts and low-fat dairy foods," nutritionist Lisa Drayer told CNN. "I personally love the fact that a daily glass of red wine is encouraged as part of the Mediterranean diet."

Among the “worst” diet plans on the list, the Whole 30 and Dukan diets intended to relieve “unhealthy cravings and habits” were overwhelmingly criticized by the expert panel. Among the complaints about the Whole 30 diet they wrote, "No independent research. Nonsensical claims. Extreme. Restrictive...the worst of the worst for healthy eating."