Atkins, Shmatkins -- fad diets are all the same

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A lot of people have been asking me about my thoughts on the widely popular "it" diet of the moment, the Atkins diet.

Actually, no one's asked me, but I'll tell you that, for what it's worth, this "diet," once a semi-interesting dinner table and talk-show conversation item has officially slipped into the abyss of cliché and is spiraling dangerously toward being a full-fledged, overexposed marketing tool.

There.

The idea of throwing out the window the traditional weight-loss rhetoric of expending more calories than you take in through exercise and a balanced diet had turned Dr. Atkins into the fifth Beatle before his sudden death last year.

Now all of a sudden, Dr. Atkins is Van Gogh as the regard with which he was held by his contemporaries has just gone through the roof since he died.

Case in point, when Dr. Atkins was still alive I'm sure it had never crossed the mind of any bigwig at the Burger King corporate think tank in Miami to begin offering bunless Whoppers as an actual menu item.

Now, the science of the Atkins diet is pretty simple: Eliminating carbohydrates from your diet will send your body into a state of ketosis during which it will begin burning fat for energy.

Seems logical enough. Medical research is now telling us that Dr. Atkins wasn't such a quack after all, that the diet actually has some merit to it.

But is medical research telling that man or woman in your office who's dropped a few pounds on Atkins to say, "do you have any idea how many carbs are in that sub?" while they proudly throw their pizza crusts in the trash? Is it telling Hardees to serve its sourdough melt sans the sourdough and between two pieces of lettuce? Or worse yet, is it telling every marketing wizard in the country to trot out all of their bogus, "hip" commercials with flashing colors, rapid camera shots and hip-hop jingles to advertise some boring, mediocre, low-carb wrap-thingy?

No.

I haven't read that report yet.

Which brings me back to this bunless Whopper.

Burger King has launched a full-scale advertising blitz to promote this silly idea that its customers are completely incapable of removing their own bun from their own damn sandwich.

They'll tell you it's because they feel that they need to offer their loyal customers a "nutritional" alternative to the usual fries, onion rings, calorie-loaded sodas -- and especially those evil buns. (I'm thinking that if you're a loyal customer of Burger King, a four-inch bun on your Whopper is the least of your worries. You might want to rethink your commitment to Dr. Atkins' holy diet if you're still running out to BK a few times a week for a Whopper -- bun or not.)

What they mean to tell you is that they feel they need to offer their loyal customers whatever they need to offer them to keep them coming in as the fast food nation suddenly looks down at its collective love handle and gets a temporary (aren't all diets temporary?) conscience.

Who knows, maybe the bunless burger will change the face of the fast food industry. Maybe you'll look around the U.S. in a couple years and we'll all be as thin as Frenchmen, sucking down turkey-wraps like they're Big Macs.

I doubt it, but for you Atkins devotees, enjoy it while it lasts. Once this latest ploy runs its course, you'll have to start taking off the buns yourself again.

Jack Buehrer's column appears every Thursday on the Go! Weekly page. Contact him at 419-334-1050 or jbuehrer~fremont.gannett.com.

Originally published Thursday, January 22, 2004