http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2647748

'Put Fat Children on Atkins Diet'

By PA News reporter


Overweight children should be put on Atkins-style diets to lose weight and prevent life-threatening diseases, a cancer specialist claimed today.

Professor Julian Peto, from the Institute of Cancer Research, believes high protein, low carbohydrate diets could be the solution to the country’s soaring obesity problem.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We have a major obesity problem in this country. It is now overtaking smoking as the number one killer and I am very concerned that we need to tackle it early.

“Children especially need to be targeted. We should be weighing children in school regularly and we need to rethink dietary advice because the current advice clearly isn’t working.”

It is estimated that more than half of the UK is either overweight or obese, with the problem soaring among children. In 1998, 9% of two to four-year-olds were considered obese – almost double the figure in 1989. The World Health Organisation says being overweight causes diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer.

Prof Peto says the Atkins diet, which involves eating lots of meat and other high protein foods, works because proteins suppress the appetite and people do not eat as much.

“I am sure the Atkins wasn’t developed on this basis but that is why it works. The levels of salt and fat are anything but healthy but the basis of the diet – which is low carbohydrate and high protein – is ideal for losing weight.”

The controversial diet was developed by Dr Robert C Atkins, who published his first book in 1972. Since then more than 15 million Atkins diet books have been sold worldwide and the eating regime has become an international phenomenon.

But its opponents claim that, over the long term, it can cause kidney damage, thin bones and constipation, raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of diabetes and an early heart attack.

Despite these concerns, some British doctors are already putting obese children on Atkins-style diets.

Dr Dee Dawson, medical director at Rhodes Farm Clinic, a residential home for treatment of children with eating disorders, says the diet is good for children.

“The children who come here are not just overweight, they are ill, and in danger of dying. Some of them can’t breathe and some of them can’t lie down.

“I do think the basis of Atkins – low carbohydrate and high protein – is a good diet for children and the priority is for these children to get weight off.”

But nutritionist Dr Toni Steer, of the Medical Research Council, warned that there is not enough research into the long-term health effects of being on the diet.

“We realise obesity is a major problem which we need to tackle as a matter of urgency but I would be very concerned about advising children to follow diets like Atkins.”