No. It doesn’t. How do I know? Because, unlike the authors of this new diet fad, I spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow working on sirtuins, metabolism and cellular bioenergetics and published several studies on the topic. In this latest fad diet, certain foods, which the authors call “sirtfoods,” supposedly contain “special chemicals” that activate your “skinny gene,” aka your sirtuins. By the way, you don’t just have one sirtuin type in your cells, as the singular “gene” in “skinny gene” implies, you have seven.

So here’s the thing, sirtuins themselves have nothing to do with being “skinny.” See, sirtuins were discovered when a group of scientists noticed that yeast receiving only a fraction of the glucose (food) they normally do lived a lot longer than expected. I won’t get into the science of it, but it was discovered that caloric restriction (low food intake) can activate sirtuins, which then subsequently turn on a number of downstream events within the cell leading to some potentially beneficial “anti-aging” and life-expanding effects. Say what??? Eating less makes you live long. Oh. Okay.

So I think the authors of the Sirtfood Diet are confused. It’s the calorie restriction (eating less), not the subsequently activated sirtuins, that would result in any potential weight loss. Also, while some of these “sirtfoods” (e.g. red wine) contain chemicals such as resveratrol that have been found to activate sirtuins in lab settings, it’s not been shown to do so in a real life setting. Okay. But, to play devil’s advocate, let’s just say the resveratrol from a glass of red wine is actually able to activate one or more of the sirtuins in your cells, to the best of our knowledge, activating the sirtuin(s) does not lead to processes that would make you lose weight. So, I’m still not clear why this phenomenon is being touted as such by the authors.

With that said, the actual list of recommneded “sirtfoods,” including kale, green tea, turmeric, blueberries, strawberries, walnuts, etc., are quite healthy, so by all means, enjoy these foods for your health. But, don’t expect to lose weight because the strawberry you just ate turned on your “skinny gene.” Which brings me to my last point.

I’d like to call out the pink elephant in the room. Maybe the Sirtfood Diet works not because the foods are turning on your sirtuin “skinny gene,” but because on a very BIG sidenote, the main component of the Sirtfood Diet happens to require a significant reduction in food and energy intake.