Monday, Oct. 20, 2003 11 a.m. EDT

Atkins Diet Doesn't Work

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The Atkins diet works - for a while. But as renowned junk science debunker and author of "Fat of the Land" Michael Fumento points out, it doesn't take all that long to regain the weight lost on the diet.

Fumento explains, in a recent op-ed piece published in papers around the country, that the Atkins and the similar "South Beach" diets "induce rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks, because all low-carb diets promote quick water loss. Water is heavy, but it is not fat."

And in no time at all, dieters get tired of following the low-carbohydrate regimes and resume normal eating and the weight piles back on, as shown by a 12-month study in the May 22, 2003, New England Journal of Medicine.

As Fumento explains it, the late Dr. Atkins claimed: "Foods high on the hypoglycemic index, invariably carbohydrates, send sugar rushing into the bloodstream. The pancreas then shoots insulin like a fire hose to clear the sugar out of the blood and into the organs. But now that same insulin makes the body hunger for more sugar, creating a vicious cycle and causing obesity."

Not so, said University of Washington endocrinologist Michael Schwartz. He told Fumento, "There is no compelling evidence that in normal individuals day-to-day fluctuations of the blood glucose level are an important determinant of how much food is consumed."

Schwartz also wrote in the journal Science, "Although the concept that insulin triggers weight gain has little scientific merit, it remains a key selling point for advocates of diets that are low in carbohydrate and high in protein and fat."

Fumento challenges Atkins' belief that eating fats causes people to become satiated.

The literature on this is both voluminous and clear, Fumento says. "Fat and carbohydrates reduce hunger equally, although protein may have a slight edge."

If either the hyperinsulinemia or fat-satiety theories are true, Fumento explains, "it would certainly show up in the decades of studies comparing diets of varying fat and carbohydrate content."

But it doesn't.

He explains that the April 2001 Journal of the American Dietetic Association reviewed "all [such] studies identified," over 200 total. Conclusion: "Weight loss is independent of diet composition."

In other words, it's not what you eat - it's how much you eat.

Moreover, he writes, a recent review in the April 9, 2003, Journal of the American Medical Association found "insufficient evidence to conclude that lower-carbohydrate content is independently associated with greater weight loss compared with higher-carbohydrate content."

"Obesity experts who do publish such studies, including those directly comparing Atkins dieters to high-carb dieters, say Atkins works only because it excludes so much of what we normally consume that we end up eating fewer calories. But soon people get bored and repack the pounds," Fumento wrote.

Fumento concludes: "Only proper eating and exercise will cause permanent weight loss, as I and countless other former fatties can attest."