New Questions About Atkins Diet

Jan 19, 2004 7:47 pm US/Eastern

http://cbsnewyork.com/healthwatch/l..._019194757.html

NEW YORK (CBS) The wildly-popular Atkins diet, that endorses a high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate approach to weight loss is again the center of controversy.

For years, doctors have questioned the health effects of the plan. Now, there are more questions after recent reports that Atkins officials are changing their recommendations.

CBS 2's Michael Pomeranz has more on a charge that Atkins officials are finding tough to swallow.

The belief that the Atkins diet is an "all the meat you can eat" plan that promises weight loss without health problems has always been controversial.

Now there are reports Atkins officials are telling clients to lighten-up on saturated fats, reports the people at Atkins say are not true.

"Since 1972, the tenets of the Atkins plan have remained the same," says Colette Heimowitz, Vice President of Education and Research at Atkins. She says there has been no change at all to the high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diet itself.

But recent reports say Atkins consumer publications are not clear and that they tell readers 60 percent of their calories should come from fat but they don't specify what percent should be saturated, from foods such as meat, eggs and cheese.

It's a point Atkins officials don't deny: "We don't expect someone following the Atkins nutritional approach to walk around with a calculator and to figure out how many calories and what percentage of that should come from fat. Nor do they need to limit fat and they never have," says Heimowitz.

Elizabeth Pakkala, a former Atkins dieter, says she wishes she knew that. She thought she could eat all the meat she wanted.

But she was only on the high protein plan for eight days and couldn't handle the headaches and mood swings. "If they're reconsidering what they said in the beginning, then you know, I'm happy about that for them," Pakkala said.

They are not but many in the scientific community wish they would -- they have been skeptical for years.

"We in the health world know that the Atkins diet and the premise in which it is based, which is eating a lot of foods rich in artery-clogging fat, has been bad," says Dietician Samantha Heller from NYU's Medical Center.

Heimowitz says the diet's founder, Dr. Robert Atkins who died last year, had always maintained that fat itself was not dangerous but when combined with a lot of carbohydrates, it could be.

Now thousands of Atkins' followers may have to decide once again if the diet once thought to be too good to be true really is.