I also wrote to Fumento. Here is the exchange. Note the evasions and smokescreens, as well as the pleasing tone.

Sheldon

Michael--

When years went by without an Atkins-funded study, Dean Ornish and others blasted him for not doing studies. Now that he has funded one, he's blasted for doing it. Do you get the feeling he can't win? It's the establishment that's suspect here, and I'm surprised you don't see it.

Besides, what about the U of Cincinnati study, funded by the AHA, and the U Conn study, which has similar results as the Atkins study for weight loss and lipids?

Explaining the lipid "improvement" (I ignore here the severe problems with the cholesterol-heart-disease hypothesis, see the separate work by Uffe Ravnskov and Malcolm Kendrick) can't be explained away by weight loss. If the Atkins folks are eating bacon, steaks, eggs, and cheese in abundance, one should not expect weight loss to cancel out the allegedly bad effects of all that fat and cholesterol. There is more going on.

Time is showing that it's the low-fat crowd who's engaged in junk
science. Some people have known at least as early as 1863 (through William Banting) that low-carb is the way to health and weight loss. Stefansson's year-long meat-only diet in 1928 under medical supervision at Bellevue Hospital in New York showed the same thing.

Fat doesn't make you fat. Carbs-sugar-and-insulin do.

Regards,
Sheldon

Reply:

I didn't say that the study was wrong because Atkins funded it. After indicating WHY it was wrongly INTEPRETED, I offered as a possible explanation as to why that might be.

I quoted the co-author of that Cincinnati study, Randy Seeley, giving the explanation that it was the weight-loss that did it. Why do you criticize articles you haven't bothered to carefully read? I also quoted the co-author of another sister study providing the same explanation.

"If the Atkins folks are eating bacon, steaks, eggs, and cheese in abundance, one should not expect weight loss to cancel out the allegedly bad effects of all that fat and cholesterol."

Logically, that is incorrect. Whatever blood marker increases from these saturated fats could be more than canceled out by the weight loss. Factually, it is also incorrect. We have no idea of what fats those people ate. You assume it was entirely saturated. Yet we know for a fact they were given flaxseed and fish oil supplements, which lower blood, marker levels. While it's hardly likely, for all you know every one of those Atkins dieters ate nothing but fish and heart-healthy canola oil as the fat portion of their diet.

Banting, whose letter came out in 1872, obviously had nothing more than alleged empirical evidence to support his thesis. On the other hand, there is a mass (over 200 studies) of studies printed in peer-reviewed medical journals indicating that high-carb, high-fiber diets tend to bring about more weight loss. Obviously that's not a ticket to drink gallons of soda and eat candy all day long.

Your final statement is completely wrong, even by Atkins's account. He says fat can make you fat, but only in the presence of a high amount of carbs. Many studies have shown that dietary fat is converted slight MORE efficiently into body fat than carbohydrates, though the difference is so small as to be negligible. And finally, insulin is absolutely necessary to sustain life. Ask any diabetic. But go ahead and have your pancreas removed and you WILL lose weight - as you decay in the grave.

Sincerely,

Michael Fumento