Hold the Bun
 

Hold the bun
http://www.columbusalive.com/2004/2...4/03100413.html

Fast food chains and grocers are embracing the 30-year-old Atkins diet like never before. Why are they climbing on the low-carb bandwagon now?

by Amy Aldridge

Though the Atkins Nutritional Approach has been around since the 1970s, suddenly it’s impossible to peruse grocery store shelves without seeing that big red “A,” or go out to eat without hearing someone talk about carb-counting. If it seems like you’re one of the few Americans left who hasn’t banded together with the “carbavoids,” you may be wondering if you should be ashamed of your massive carbohydrate intake or relieved that you haven’t succumbed to the resurgence of another fad diet.

With approximately one out of every seven adult Americans on a low-carb diet and an estimated 32 million people in the United States leading low-carb lifestyles similar to the Atkins Approach, we should have guessed it wouldn’t take long for the fast food industry to get involved. Subway, Burger King, Jimmy Johns, Donatos and TGI Friday’s are just a few of the many restaurant chains staking their claim in the carb-cutting market and offering Atkins-friendly food options.

But why now? The Atkins diet celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2002, yet the fast food spotlight has only really been shining on it since December 2003.

According to Matt Wiant, senior vice president for Atkins Nutritionals, research showing the positive results of controlled-carb lifestyles has finally gotten the public to see the dangers of unhealthy eating.

Residents of Columbus, Men’s Fitness magazine’s 10th fattest city, may want to take heed.

“Our vision is to help change the way the world eats to promote good health,” Wiant said. “We believe that offering food solutions with fewer processed carbs is the way to achieve this.”

For Burger King this means holding the bun on your Whopper. At Subway you can replace the bread with an Atkins-friendly tortilla made of whole wheat, soy and sesame flour. Stranger still is the NoDough pizza from Donatos: pizza toppings baked on a bed of protein crumbles on an oven-safe plate.

No matter how bizarre the idea of eating these popular foods half-finished might be, Wiant said it’s what low-carb consumers wanted.

“While we already have over 125 packaged foods available for Atkins followers, they told us they also need options when they are out,” he said. “They asked if we could work with some restaurant chains to develop healthy low-carb menus.”

And they’ve done just that. TGI Friday’s introduced its Atkins-approved menu in early December. Spokesperson Amy Freshwater said the restaurant decided to partner with Atkins after seeing guests making their own menu modifications—ordering broccoli instead of French fries or cheeseburgers without the bun.

Their official Atkins menu items include Buffalo wings, the Sizzling New York Strip and Fridays’ famous Cheeseburger Cheeseburger (without the bun, of course)—none of which would normally be associated with traditional low-fat diets.

Tod Matola, a 36-year-old Atkins dieter, said Friday’s menu is very good, as is the Atkins-friendly menu at Don Pablo’s. “They have a really good low-carb fajita that you eat on lettuce hot wraps,” Matola said. “And, to top it all off, they even have a low-carb margarita.”

Matola has been leading the Atkins lifestyle since the beginning of January. Like many fellow carbavoids, Matola enjoyed rapid weight loss of about 20 pounds. He said he feels the reason so many people are trying the Atkins Approach now is because there are more choices available at restaurants and grocery stores, meaning you aren’t forced to eat tasteless food.

Subway rolled out its Atkins-friendly wraps late last year. Les Winograd, a public relations coordinator for Subway, said it’s a coincidence that fast food chains are introducing their low-carb options at about the same time, though it’s possibly because they all noticed the same trends.

“We understood that a vast number of people were following carb-controlled diets and a large number of the people we surveyed about a year ago said they were following the Atkins diet,” Winograd said. “Basically we found that a large segment of the population was being underserved.”

Donatos spokesperson Tom Santor said they too saw people in their restaurants and even in their own company conference rooms making their pizza Atkins-friendly—eating the toppings and leaving the crust behind.

“Since we are so fanatical about how we make our crust we were freaking out,” Santor said. “But the more we looked into it, the more we found that that’s the way carb-watchers eat pizza.”

Memories, a Grove City restaurant, doesn’t have a specific Atkins-friendly menu but still attracts a significant amount of low-carb dieters.

“One lady actually asked me to cut the graham cracker crust off of her cheesecake,” said Lindsey Nock, a waitress at Memories. “Most people just ask for their burger without a bun and substitute cottage cheese for their French fries.”

Nock said about 35 percent of the people she waits on are either on low-carb diets or want to modify their meals to reduce the number of carbs.

Even Wild Oats Natural Marketplace in Upper Arlington has developed a way to offer low-carb items in their own natural and organic way. The Atkins products, however, did not meet their natural or organic standards.

“Our customers were asking for these low-carb products. It makes the diet easier for them because they have more options,” said Sonja Tuitele, a Wild Oats spokesperson. “So we looked at the trend for low-carb dieting—I do think it’s a trend and not a fad—and we decided not to compromise our standards and yet still offer low-carb, natural products.”

With low-carb breads, pastas and other organic products, Tuitele said Wild Oats focuses on the healthy side of the diet, rather than the packaged bars and shakes most dieters are used to.

So does the Atkins Nutritional Approach’s four-phase diet, which centers on cutting carbs in order to burn fat, truly work? That question is best left to the experts, and they have yet to come up with a definite answer.

Steven Hertzler, an assistant professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University, is adamant that the Atkins Nutritional Approach will not have a fairy-tale ending for longtime dieters.

“If the Atkins diet was so successful in the hands of the millions of people who have bought the book, why do we still have so many fat people around?” he asked. “The Atkins diet works fast in the beginning, but it is a major stress that the body will attempt to adjust to. Thus, the dieter soon plateaus and, eventually, the weight starts coming right back.”

Research conducted on low-carb dieters by Dr. Linda Stern of the University of Pennsylvania over a period of six months has shown that what Hertzler said is correct—people on low-carb diets do lose significantly larger amounts of weight than those on traditional, low-fat diets for the first six months. In fact, those on the low-carb diets also showed increases in good cholesterol and decreases in triglycerides.

But don’t throw away your spaghetti noodles and bread just yet—another study conducted over a 12-month span showed no significant difference in the amount of weight lost between the two types of diets. Without longer-term studies, researchers say the evidence for the overall effectiveness and safety of low-carb diets is inconclusive.

Hertzler, however, said it’s not so much inconclusive as it is obvious.

“Americans have a completely incorrect attitude about what it takes to permanently lose weight,” he said. “Think of the leanest, healthiest, most active people you know. What do these people eat? Think about the super-fit endurance athletes. What do they eat? All these people live on higher-carbohydrate diets coupled with ample physical activity.”

“It is simple,” Hertzler continued. “Carbs are not to blame. Carbs, after all, are a terrific energy source for exercise. And exercise is what it takes to get and stay lean.”

Alexis Maddox, a 20-year-old low-carb dieter, said after eating one of the Subway wraps she was skeptical that other carbavoids are dieting healthily.

“I think people who decide to do the low-carb diet have to be careful and not think that it’s OK to eat extremely fatty things because they are low in carbs,” Maddox said. “At Subway I had a chicken ranch wrap and they put a ton of cheese and bacon on it. I know that can’t be healthy.”

According to Hertzler the Subway wraps have around 50 percent of their calories from fat and 1,300 to 1,600 milligrams of sodium each, hardly what he would call health food.

The question remains as to what low-carb dieters will face in the long run: Will it be heart disease and clogged arteries, as some critics contend, or smaller pant sizes and long-lasting health? With the sudden and widespread help from the fast food industry, carb-cutting’s future effects may not take so long to reveal themselves.


For more info on the Atkins approach, click to atkins.com.

March 10, 2004

Copyright © 2004 Columbus Alive, Inc. All rights reserved.