Praise the Lard
(Filed: 25/05/2003)
link to article
Detractors are being forced to eat their scathing words after two studies last week found that the Atkins diet works - and it's good for you, report Olga Craig and Robert Matthews
It made him a multi-millionaire, won him the gushing gratitude of a host of now svelte Hollywood stars and made his name synonymous with weight loss. Dr Atkins' Diet Revolution and Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution, the tomes that have been tucked into the bookshelves of thousands of slimmers throughout the past 30 years, transformed the career of Dr Robert Atkins from that of humble cardiologist to diet guru.
The updated version has topped the best-sellers list for five years, sold 25 million copies, been read by 50 million people and includes Catherine Zeta Jones, Renee Zellweger, Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Aniston and Minnie Driver among its devotees. The F Plan, the Scarsdale and the Cabbage Soup Diet have come and gone, but not the Atkins diet. While its popularity may have waned in the 1980s, its endorsement by A-list celebrities sent it soaring again in the 1990s with the publication of Dr Atkins' New Diet Cookbook.
Yet credibility and scientific recognition, the twin accolades that Dr Atkins fought harder for than fame or fortune - he amassed $100 million - eluded him in his lifetime. His controversial diet, based on the philosophy that feasting on fats and high-protein foods while shunning carbohydrates is the best way to achieve lasting weight loss, may have won millions of converts but time and time again it was rubbished in the worlds of science and medicine.
Doctors and dieticians dubbed it dangerous, claiming that it could lead to cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Some even urged slimmers to sue Dr Atkins on the grounds that what he preached was "nutritional heresy". In America, Neal Barnard, the president of the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine, told Dr Atkins: "This is exactly the sort of diet you would put someone on if you wanted to give them colon cancer, kidney disease, heart disease or osteoporosis." And in Britain his words were echoed by Dr Wendy Doyle of the British Dietic Association who said: "There is evidence to prove this diet is dangerous."
Dr Atkins was even forced to defend his controversial diet before the US Congress.
How untimely then, that he has achieved so soon after death the vindication he so desperately sought in life. When, a month ago, he slipped on an icy pavement outside his New York office, suffering a fatal brain haemorrhage, he was oblivious to the fact that two leading US universities were on the verge of publishing studies in The New England Journal of Medicine affirming his life's work.
Not only does the Atkins diet work, they concluded, but in reducing the chances of stroke and heart disease it is one of the most healthy food regimes one can adopt. Their publications came a month too late for Dr Atkins to relish the science world being forced to eat its scathing words of criticism. Veronica, his widow, said yesterday: "My belief in my husband never wavered. I always knew he would be proved right. I am only sorry he had to wait so long and is not here to himself savour the moment."
Only a year ago, when he suffered a heart attack, the medical world gloated as he lay in intensive care, despite his insistence that his cardiac arrest was brought on by an infection.
Among Dr Atkins's devotees, the news this week that his diet is not just safe but extremely healthy has been welcomed with delight. This morning Ben Anderson, 37, will don his running shoes as he does every Sunday and jog around Hyde Park. At six feet tall, he weighs 12 stone - 18 months ago he was 18 stone. "After my run I will have breakfast at my favourite greasy spoon, the full works," Ben says. "Sausages, bacon and a couple of fried eggs. Atkins worked for me. It was the first diet that didn't leave me feeling hungry. Eat fat, grow thin, I say."
His words go some way to explaining the diet's appeal, especially to men. "At heart, men are greedy," says one afficionado. "We don't like to be told to eat small portions. But this diet allows real man food. And it doesn't ban alcohol."
Put simply, the Atkins diet works thus. If you eat lots of protein and cut out carbohydrates your body will stop releasing floods of insulin - the hormone Dr Atkins called the "fattening hormone". As a result, less fat will be stored in the body. When the body is loaded with protein the kidneys are forced to work overtime to get rid of it. It takes energy to do this and, without carbohydrate, the body starts breaking down fat to make fuel.
While the philosophy sounds simple, sticking to the diet is more difficult. Feasting on mounds of meat and cheese sounds like a reasonable trade-off for being denied bread and pasta (even fruit) but in reality it becomes mind-numbingly monotonous. As Toni Steer from the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Unit in Cambridge says: "If you sit down and try to eat just a plate of meat, it is very difficult to do so in any quantity. It is all too boring. I think the Atkins diet works simply because you are not eating as many calories."
Yet while some are still sceptical, the studies published last week show that the experts who jeered at Atkins have been wrong. When the university of Pennsylvania and the university of Philadelphia tested the Atkins diet against a conventional low-fat diet on obese men and women the slimmers consistently lost more weight on Atkins, and had much less trouble maintaining their goal.
With studies of low-carb diets still in their infancy, the results have been greeted with understandable caution. Yet there is no doubt that among many scientists there is palpable irritation that Dr Atkins may have spotted something the brilliant minds of academia missed.
The current fuss over low-carb diets has come at an awkward time for nutritional research. As The Telegraph first highlighted more than a year ago the mantra of "fat is bad, carb is good" that we have been fed for years is not merely wrong, but potentially dangerous. Despite years of finger-wagging propaganda, nutritionists now admit that not a single study has confirmed that a low-fat diet produces clear long-term health benefits.
What has emerged, however, is increasing evidence of the dangers of a diet high in refined carbohydrates such as potatoes, white bread and cereals such as cornflakes. Rapidly broken down into glucose, these high "glycaemic index" (GI) foods trigger a surge in insulin levels, causing blood sugar levels to plummet. The long-term effects are believed to be increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Amazingly, these are precisely the foods that get star billing in official recommendations of the relative amounts of food needed for healthy living. The British Nutrition Foundation goes so far as to recommend that we should eat even more bread, potatoes, rice and pasta for a balanced diet.
How did nutritionists come to be so dangerously wide of the mark? Earlier this year, Professors Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer at the Harvard School of Public Health published a review of the debacle in Scientific American. One key factor, they argue, was an attempt by nutritionists to keep their message simple. By blithely insisting that all fat is bad, officials rode roughshod over the fact that only saturated fat has been linked with heart disease. Studies have shown that other forms of fat, from olives and fish, for example, are beneficial.
The oversimplification created another problem. By ruling out all fat, nutritionists were forced to find the calories needed for life from somewhere else. Protein sources - favoured by Dr Atkins - were ruled out because they often come with high amounts of saturated fat. That left carbohydrates.
Until recently, no one thought to check such advice. Now it is clear that the simple "Fat is bad, carb is good" message has been a public health blunder. Nevertheless, the BNF has no plans to change its guidelines about the level of carbohydrate intake. - though it does recommend using wholegrain, unprocessed varieties whenever possible. The growing evidence that "Fat is sometimes good, carbs often bad, especially if heavily processed", may not make such a snappy mantra, but seems to have the virtue of being right.
Doubtless the medical wrangles over whether the Atkins diet truly works will continue. This summer the late doctor's final tome will be published. Its title is Atkins For Life - a rather unfortunate title for a posthumous publication.
"Detractors are being forced to eat their scathing words; Praise the Lard"
Linear Mode
