Although I could have addressed a wide range of misinformation this article contains, I felt it was clearest not to argue so much with the hospital officials that the BBC was relaying quotes from, but rather hitting the BBC's own article writer in what the author screwed up on. That way, the BBC can't pawn it off on saying "oh, we were merely quoting what somebody ELSE said" - but rather, we can bust the BBC article-writer's sloppy, incorrect reporting of even what the Atkins Diet is in the first place. Accordingly, I sent this to the BBC feedback online form, under the category of "factual errors"
which I found at the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/...errors_form.stm

Your recent article: "Hospital bans Atkins diet" contains numerous factual errors. One example is where you concluded the article by stating:

"People following the diet are encouraged to eat lots of protein like eggs and bacon and to keep clear of sugar and carbohydrates such as pasta, rice and fruit and vegetables."

Whomever it was on your staff that wrote this article clearly did not bother to even roughly familiarize themself with what the Atkins Diet is. Otherwise, they'd have realized that the Atkins diet not only allows - but in fact STRONGLY ENCOURAGES - one to eat vegetables. It also in fact DOES allow partaking in moderate portions of fruits as well. Contrary to what you also misstated, it does not recommend eating "lots of bacon" - in fact, they caution against most commercial varieties of bacon due to it typically containing potentially harmful nitrates.

I expected a better quality of information from you. The error you made is very easy to verify, which makes it a mystery how it was written by the author and slipped past your editor too.

Next time you write about a diet, bother to glance at least at the first couple of chapters, so you won't grossly misinform your readers again.