Posted on Thu, Mar. 11, 2004

Atkins research full of controversy

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunher...ing/8156442.htm

Q: I'm doing a research paper on the Atkins diet for my English Comp 2 class. The paper is to be persuasive and have controversy. I read your column on the Atkins diet. Would you have any other information or some good sources I could use?

A: The weight loss benefit of the Atkins diet has generated a lot of interest in re-examining conventional wisdom about what makes up a healthy, balanced diet, and government nutritionists appear to be on the way to changing some aspects of the venerable Food Pyramid.

You won't have any trouble finding information on the Atkins diet. So, apart from the diet specifically, following are a few controversial dietary issues to get you thinking:

• The belief that dietary carbohydrates are generally turned into fat seems to be widespread. However, in a fairly well-balanced diet, it seems that only a very small percentage of carbohydrates is converted to fat. This percentage would increase as the diet gets progressively higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat.

• Simple carbohydrates (e.g., sugar, white rice, white bread) tend to drive up blood sugar (glucose) levels more quickly than complex carbohydrates, with an attendant rise in insulin levels. Suppose we're talking about a high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet (the opposite of Atkins-type diets) consisting of equal amounts of simple and complex carbohydrates. Would more simple than complex carbohydrates be converted to fat, and, if so, why?

• In an article in Men's Health, the author quotes a nutrition researcher as saying, "The easiest way to get energy is to break down muscle mass." The idea presented is that if you don't eat before exercise, your body would break down the very tissue (muscle) you're trying to improve. That is, the body would break down protein for its energy needs. This idea seems controversial.

The general understanding seems to be that, except in extreme circumstances such as starvation, the body burns food for fuel in this order: carbohydrates, fat and protein (as in muscle tissue). First, the body would use some of the immediately available glucose in the blood, then it would start converting glycogen, the storage form of glucose in the body, into glucose and use that.

Next comes fat (the principle on which the Atkins diet is based). Last would come protein. You can find this article online by typing its title into the Google search box ("The New Science of Weight Loss").

As to sources: You could start by using Google with keyword searches. Many of your hits should include references, and you can pick out the most authoritative of these to pursue. Be wary of information you find on Web pages associated with a vested interest.

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Richard Harkness is a consultant pharmacist and specialist in natural therapies. Write him at 1224 King Henry Drive, Ocean Springs MS 39564; or rharkn~aol.com.