Active Low-Carber Forums - Consumer Reports article about diets

Hi, gang...

Just got the June 2002 issue of Consumer Reports and the cover story this month is about diets: what works, what doesn't, etc. Apparently, they sent out a survey form to their readers to see who had successfully lost weight and kept it off. Although I respect this publication and use it frequently before I buy products, I fully expected to hear the usual blather about high carb, low fat eating. I was wrong.

I can't type the whole article here, but I can include some interesting snippets:

Consumer Reports June, 2002
To find out how well average people do on their diets, we targeted survey respondents who tried to lose weight deliberately. To try to exclude people with eating disorders from our study, we left out dieters who didn't start with a moderately high body mass index, or BMI, of at least 27, a standard measure of fatness that takes into account both height and weight.

Of our respondents, nearly 8000 had managed to lose at least 10 percent of their starting weight and keep it off for a year or more. Such a loss won't turn most Americans into runway models, but studies show it can produce dramatic changes in weight-related health conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

The strongest finding that emerges from the responses, other than the necessity for exercise, is that when it comes to losing weight, one size definitely does not fit all. Eighty-three percent of the successful losers said they lost weight entirely on their own. That overturns the long-held conviction that to lose weight, you have to enroll in an expensive program, buy special food, or follow the regimen of a particular diet guru.

Diets that work match an individual's personal needs and preferences. John Uebersax, 48, a San Diego biostatistician, has maintained a 24 pound weight loss for 10 years by taking brisk walks during work breaks and by following a regimen that evolved in part from a career entailing frequent travel without access to a refrigerator, much less a kitchen. His staples include protein bars, canned tuna, vegetarian meat substitutes, yogurt, fruit, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. He also swallows a spoonful of olive oil each morning. Uebersax says that this unconventional meal plan works fine for him. "I don't like cooking," he says. "I'm not a good cook, and I hate cleaning up".

Though obesity experts are still debating the full significance of some of their latest research findings, they've already come up with useful approaches that loser wannabes can apply immediately. Most match the strategies used by the weight-loss achievers who answered out survey:

1. Tame your blood sugar. The body's use of carbohydrates seems to be key to success. Carbohydrates are the staple of everyday diets and as much as 55 to 60 percent of the traditional low-fat reducing diet. In the digestive precess, carbs break down into glucose (sugar) molecules, which are then sent into the bloodstream. In response to the upsurge in blood sugar, the pancreas secretes the hormone insulin, without which cells can't take up glucose to use as energy. But fast-acting carbohydrates such as sugar, refined flour, white rice, pasta, and potatoes have a high "glycemic index" -- that is, they turn into blood glucose much more quickly than carbohydrates in high-fiber foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. The abrupt infusion of blood sugar from fast-acting carbohydrates unleashes a surge of insulin so great that it overshoots the metabolic mark and drives blood-sugar levels lower than normal. Low blood sugar makes us feel hungry, so we reach for another high-glycemic-index carb -- starting the whole cycle all over again.

Low-glycemic meals seem to curb hunger in adults, too, according to a recent study of a dozen overweight men by scientists form Laval University in Quebec. On their own, the men consumed 25 percent fewer calories on a low-glycemic diet than on a standard low-fat diet. Moreover, their triglyceride levels improved. More than half of our five year successes who tried "eating fewer carbs like bread and potatoes" also said it helped them lose weight and keep it off.

2. Don't skimp on protein. Traditional reducing diets restrict protein intake to 15 percent of calories. Yet according to Gary Foster, Ph.D., clinical director of the wieght and eating disorders program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, "If you add protein to the diet, it basically slows the absorption of food." If you eat a platter of fish with some white rice, for example, your blood sugar will rise more slowly than if you consume the same number of calories as rice alone -- making protein a useful part of a low-glycemic diet. Nancy Vascellaro, a New York City special education coordinator with years of failed diets behind her, lost 30 pounds two years ago after she took the advice of a nutritionist and ate protein at practically every meal and snack, while cutting her consumption of high-glycemic carbs by more than half. "It's been very doable because I've never been hungry," Vascellaro says. "If I want extra food for dinner, instead of having an extra portion of pasta, I'll reach for an extra piece of chicken."

3. Avoid dense foods. A distended stomach is one signal of satiety with which we're all familiar. Scientists are now learning that dieters can trick their stomachs into feeling that way by choosing foods that have relatively few calories per unit of volume. The idea is that you'll feel full before you've consumed too many calories.

The easiest way to lower the energy density of food is to add water and fiber and to reduce fat. A bowl of chicken-noodle soup, for instance, will fill you up faster than the same amount of chicken and noodles served side by side on a plate. The foods with the lowest energy density -- water-rich fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats -- are the same foods that lower the glycemic index.

4. Have a little fat. The standard prescription for weight loss is to reduce fat to 30 percent or less of total calories. The NIH and the AHA both endorse a low-fat diet as a proven means of preventing heart disease. Diet surveys show that Americans have heeded the "fat is bad" message by cutting back on foods like whole milk, red meat, and eggs in the last 10 years or so. But, says Kathy McManus, R.D., director of the nutrition department at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, "What the American public chose to eat instead of fat was not zucchini, asparagus, and kidney beans, but refined carbs such as fat-free frozen yogurt, fat-free cookies, pretzels, rice cakes, and graham crackers."

Some obesity experts are now reconsidering their anti-fat hard line. Recent research shows that replacing fat with high-glycemic carbs can wreak havoc on blood-triglyceride levels even if it helps shed weight. Also, long-term studies have shown that eating certain healthful kinds of fats -- notably, mono-and poly-unsaturated vegetable oils, nuts, and fish oil -- seems to protect people against heart disease. Most important, however is new evidence that allowing people to eat a bit more fat than previously permitted can motivate them to stay on their weight-loss plan long enough to show measurable results -- and maintain them.

5. Keep at it. To an extent, the supersuccesful and unsuccessful dieters used similar weight-loss strateiges. They reduced portion sizes, ate more fruits and vegetables, cut back on fat, and avoided sweets and junk food. So why did some succeed while others failed? Persistence. More than half of the supersuccesses said they applied those strategies to their diets every dat, and another 30 percent did so a few times a week. By contrast, only 20 percent of the failures used the strategies every day.

ATKINS DIET -- What's wrong with it? For nearly 30 years, the nutrition establishment has denounced the diet promulgated by Dr. Robert C. Atkins for its unsound high-fat, ultra-low-carb regimen. Yet DANDR is still flying off the bookstore shelves. Of the 10 best-selling diet authors we asked about in our questionnaire, Atkins stood out from the rest. Eighteen percent of all the dieters said they'd read one of his books. That was more than four times as many as had read any of the others. And 34 percent said that his advice helped them to lose weight and keep it off. Although the original version of the Atkins diet has been around since the '70s, "Atkins has overpromoted it without data, and doctors have criticized it without data," says Gary Foster, Ph.D., clinical director of the weight and eating disorders program at the University of Penn.

To fill that gap, Foster and collaborators at the University of Colorado Health Science Center and at the Washington Univeristy School of Medicine rounded up 42 overweight volunteers. They sent half of them home with instructions to follow the diet in the Atkins book. That meant they were allowed to eat as much protein and fat as they wanted, but no carbs other than a few cups of salad greens or the equivalent each day. The second group followed a standard low-fat, low calorie, high-carb diet. After 12 weeks, 7 or of the original 21 low-fat dieters had quit, while only 2 of the Atkins group had dropped out. Moreover, the Atkins dieters had already lost an average of nearly 19 pounds, compared with an average loss of just 7.5 pounds for the low-fat dieters. The researchers measured the study subjects "good" and "bad" cholesterol levels as well as their triglycerides (another indicator of heart-disease risk). The findings were mixed. Blood levels of both good and bad cholesterol went up in the Atkins group and down in the low-fat group. Triglycerides dropped more in the Atkins group than in the group on the low-fat regimen. "If I had to say whether the Atkins diet is good or bad, I'd say I still don't know," Foster says. There is now a second study involving many more people.

Our verdict: If your overall health, as assessed by a recent medical exam is good; if you LDL cholesterol level is in the low-coronary risk range, and if your kidneys are in good shape, we doubt you'll harm yourself by using the Atkins diet for 12 weeks to jump-start a weight loss attempt. (Be sure to include the daily multi-vitamin Atkins specifies.) But we don't think it should be you first choice as a reducing diet. Unless further studies establish its long-term safety, we can't endorse staying on the Atkins diet for the many months you'd need to lose a significant amount of weight. Furthermore, the diet can be deficient in the fiber that abounds in fruits and whole-grain carbs; they should be a part of any sustainable, long-term eating plan.

WHEW! That was a lot of typing! I didn't do the whole article, and you may want to check it out. Don't know if it's online (CU is non-profit...) Although we may disagree with some of the features (they just looked at induction, obviously, not OWL) I think the article was well researched and well thought out.

That's it for me for now! My fingers need a break! (Gee, how many cals did I burn typing this?! ;) )