Should 50 Cent’s weight loss be applauded or condemned?

50 Cent is sure getting a lot of attention for his extreme weight loss. The famed rapper reportedly lost more than 50 pounds for a role as a cancer patient in his upcoming film, Things Fall Apart. Once a brick-wall of a dude, 50 dropped from 214 pounds down to 160 in just nine weeks thanks to extreme exercise and an all-liquid diet. Here are the images posted on 50 Cent’s fan site.

While skinny 50 is attracting loads of publicity for his new flick, his emaciated images are also raising questions about the safety of crash diets, whether they’re for film roles or not. Here’s what Zach Weston, an Exercise Physiologist and professor of Kinesiology at Wilfrid Laurier University told the Toronto Star about extreme celebrity diets:

‘The danger in hearing about what celebrities do is that it’s not sustainable, it’s sending the wrong message and if it works for them, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for them again, or it will work for somebody else, and there are so many variables that we’re not controlling, ‘It’s not entirely the diet that has created that outcome.’

So you tell me: Is 50 Cent’s weight loss a sign of dedication to his role or a scary publicity stunt?