The K-E Diet: New Trend Uses Feeding Tubes For Rapid Weight Loss, How Far Is Too Far To Shed The Pounds?

The K-E Diet, recently featured in the New York Times, involves having a nasogastric tube inserted through the nose and down into the esophagus for up to 10 days. The diet consists of a slow drip of protein and fat mixed with water, totaling 800 calories per day with no carbohydrates.

The 10-day weight loss treatment costs $1500, the Times reported, and can result in the shedding of up to 20 pounds through ketosis, where the body burns fat instead of sugar.

Dr. Oliver Di Pietro, who administers the diet in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., told ABC News the diet involves no hospitalization or doctor supervision, simply a bag filled with the food solution and a tube inserted into the nose.

It is a hunger-free, effective way of dieting, Di Pietro told ABC. Within a few hours and your hunger and appetite go away completely, so patients are actually not hungry at all for the whole 10 days. That's what is so amazing about this diet.

According to The Daily Mail, dieters can remove the tube for one hour a day and can drink water, tea or coffee throughout the day.

The rapid weight loss technique has been dubbed controversial as a quick fix to lose weight, but Di Pietro told ABC there are no adverse side effects.

The main side effects are bad breath; there is some constipation because there is no fiber in the food, Di Pietro said, adding those with kidney issues should not try the K-E Diet.

The K-E Diet has been popular for years in Italy and Spain, called the KEN Diet, and in the UK for the past year, where the Daily Mail criticized it for being too extreme.

This could be the most shocking, controversial diet ever to reach Britain, Leah Hardy of The Daily Mail wrote in March. It is a regime so extreme, so drastic, it makes LighterLife's shakes-only system look like a daily five-course banquet. The KEN, or Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition diet, involves eating absolutely nothing at all.

Despite its recent launch in the United States, the K-E Diet has gained much popularity in the U.S., namely with brides to-be.

I don't have all of the time on the planet just to focus an hour and a half a day to exercise so I came to the doctor, I saw the diet, and I said, 'You know what? Why not? Let me try it, 41-year-old bride-to-be Jessica Schnaider told ABC News. It was emotionally difficult, the 10 days of not eating.

However, Schnaider only participated in the K-E Diet for eight days and lost 10 pounds.

The K-E Diet is similar to one 0f the most celebrity-endorsed trends in recent years, the Master Cleanse of a lemon juice, paprika and maple syrup, mixed with water in a drink for 10 days.

Invented by Gianfranco Cappello of the La Sapienza Hospital at the University of Rome, the diet works in cycles to control hunger. Despite its method of starvation, the K-E Diet does not result in the loss of muscle. According to the Daily Mail, Cappello has successfully treated over 40,000 patients who have lost pounds within days.

However, some believe that shedding so many pounds in a short period of time can be a dangerous route, as the body cannot adapt as quickly as the weight is dropped,

If you lose the weight too quickly your mind is not going to be able to catch up with a newer, skinnier you, psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall of Beverly Hills, Calif. told ABC News.