Health File

Feb. 4, 2003

The dieter's dilemma

In the early 1980's, the US government started a campaign to banish high-fat foods from the American diet. It was reacting to studies that seemed to show a correlation between dietary fats, obesity and heart disease. Everyone from doctors to the food industry fell into line. Soon, grocery shelves filled with low-fat versions of best-selling products and the low-fat dogma was spread by dietitians, health organizations, consumer groups, health reporters and even cookbook writers.</p> <p>But just as North Americans began cutting fat out of their diets, the overall obesity rate began to rise. How could this be?

Only recently, have academics begun to appreciate what they had long dismissed: low-carbohydrate diets do a better job of helping people lose weight and keep it off. Turns out that the carbohydrates that replace the fat in low-fat diets actually leave people hungry. Fats, on the other hand, are slow to be digested and make people feel full for longer. In the long run, people on low-carb diets eat less.</p> <p>For 30 years, the low-carb, high-fat diet promoted by <a class="redlink" href="http://atkinscenter.com/Archive/2002/1/2-360515.html">Dr. Robert Atkins</a> was pilloried in the medical press. Doctors labeled him a quack. All this, despite the fact that he had based his revolutionary diet on sound medical evidence. Atkins understood that lowering carbohydrate levels and increasing fat would lead to ketosis - a physical state that leads the body to burn excess stored fat.

Centuries before, writers such as Brillat-Savarin and Englishman <a class="redlink" href="http://www.lowcarb.ca/corpulence/index.html">William Banting</a> knew by simple observation and personal experience that carbs in large quantities led to obesity. It made sense too, to anthropologists, who long ago noted that grain products and concentrated sugars were essentially absent from the human diet until the invention of agriculture only 10,00 years ago. In other words, our bodies aren't cut out to consume the amount of sugars, starches and flour-laden foods that are staples of the North American diet today.

Today, <a class="redlink" href="http://www.lowcarb.ca/atkins-diet-and-low-carb-plans/index.html">low-carb diets</a> like Atkins, The Zone, and Michel Montignac's <a class="redlink" a href="http://www.montignac-intl.com/eng/index_en.htm">Eat Yourself Slim</a> have taken off, and it's easy to understand why. Montignac dieters are allowed a classic French diet of red meat, salads and rich desserts. And most <a class="redlink" href="http://www.lowcarbluxury.com/lowcarb-recipes.html">low-carb recipes</a> sound just as delicious as the traditional versions.</p> <p><a class="redlink" href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007C5B6-7152-1DF6-9733809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2">Scientists</a> are coming around too. A recent <a class="redlink" href="http://www.montignac-intl.com/banniere/study.html">Canadian study</a> that looked at the Montignac diet pronounced it safe and effective. And recently the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. announced it will <a class="redlink" href="http://clinicalstudies.info.nih.gov/detail/A_2001-CH-0183.html">conduct a study</a> that will examine these popular diets.

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