What an annoying thing to wake up to.

I have wmconnect internet sevice, and there are "news" stories on the homepage. Now, most of their "news" looks like it was taken straight out of a tabloid, and everyday there is some crap story aimed at people trying to lose weight. Here's one of the ones for today:

5 Ways to Spot a Dangerous Diet Plan
Pick a day. Any day. About half the women in this country are dieting on that day. And while they may be successfully losing weight, they could also be on the path to a painful, debilitating disease: osteoporosis. Without intending to do so, many popular diets are causing women to lose bone density, causing irreversible damage.

This is a startling fact: Researchers from Rutgers University say that of the 11 most popular weight loss programs, about half do not contain enough calcium and other critical nutrients, reports FitCommerce.com. "Women who follow calcium-poor diet plans for extensive periods of time could be causing irreversible damage to their bones and putting themselves at greater risk for osteoporosis," lead study author Audrey Cross told FitCommerce. "Some of the popular diet regimens reinforce the myth that dairy foods are fattening, but any plan that restricts milk and does not provide adequate amounts of calcium may be causing more harm than good."

Beware! The top five diets with the least amount of calcium are:

• Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution
• Sugar Busters
• Suzanne Somers' Fast & Easy
• The Perricone Prescription
• Body for Life

If you follow any of these diets, you'll get less than 60 percent of the daily recommendation for calcium. While women who are 19 to 50 years old need 1,000 mg of calcium every day, some diets provide as little as 475 mg.

Cross warns women to look for these five signs of a dangerous diet:

• Promises a quick fix
• Lists "good" and "bad" foods
• Blames specific nutrients or hormones for weight problems
• Promotes food combining and rigid rules for eating
• Eliminates one or more food group

Here's a tantalizing fact: If you stop eating dairy products, it could make it harder to lose weight. A recent study from the Nutrition Institute at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville that was published in the Journal of Nutrition concluded that low-fat dairy products may help control body fat. Lead researcher Michael Zemel says that a diet rich in low-fat dairy foods will change the way the body's fat cells do their job. "A diet high in low-fat dairy causes fat cells to make less fat and turns on the machinery to break down fat, which translates into a significantly lower risk of obesity," he explained in a news release announcing the study results. In other words, dairy foods burn fat.

Who benefits the most from a diet rich in low-fat dairy products? Women. "What we found is that women who consumed at least three servings of low-fat dairy foods per day were at the lowest risk of becoming obese," said Zemel. "In fact, there was an 80 percent reduction in risk for any given level of calorie intake."

It's tempting to cut out the dairy foods when we want to lose weight, but when you do this, Zemel says it sends a signal to your body to conserve calcium, which in turn creates higher levels of the hormone calcitriol. It's calcitriol that triggers the production of fat cells. When the calcitriol levels are boosted, fat cells expand and store themselves in the body. Translation: You get fat. But when you eat dairy foods, you get more calcium. And calcium suppresses the calcitriol. That in turn breaks down more fat.

All you really need to do is drink two glasses of fat-free milk daily. That will keep your calorie count in check and boost your metabolism.

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Several statements were just laughable, and downright false.

"If you follow any of these diets, you'll get less than 60 percent of the daily recommendation for calcium."

Now I don't know about all the diets, but I do know a little about Atkins. Just to make sure I remembered correctly, I wen to the Atkins website to read the rules of induction again.

First of all, you are allowed to have up to 4 oz of cheese a day. That's 4 servings. Cheese contains 200mg of calcium/oz., so 4 oz. of cheese conatains 800 mg., or 80% of the "rda" of calcium. Add to that a cup of bok choy (which is induction-safe), and you have 1050 mg of calcium. Hmmmmm....methinks somebody did not research well (or at all), or is working with that new math!

Cross warns women to look for these five signs of a dangerous diet:

• Promises a quick fix

Hmmm, the lc diets that I've researched didn't do this. They all stress that you have to make permanent changes in your WOE.

• Lists "good" and "bad" foods

So is it ok to have bacon, butter, and mayonnaise on a low-fat diet? Or are these not considered "bad" foods?

• Blames specific nutrients or hormones for weight problems

So why do all the low-fat diets say that fat is bad and must be limited?

• Promotes food combining and rigid rules for eating

A diet without rules--nope, can't say I've ever heard of one of those. Low-fat diets have rules just like LC'ing does.

• Eliminates one or more food group

OK, they're half right here. You can't have breads, pastas, and the like on induction. But in later phases, you can have many of the foods in that food group.

Man, these articles annoy me. Gotta learn to not click the links. No.........more..........clicking.

The media justs hopes that we are stupid and don't know how to read and do research on our own.

B57

There leading news stories must be rather old. The Rutgers study article on FitCommerce.com is dated June 2, 2003. I could not find evidence of the original report being published anywhere.

It wouldn't surprise me--most of what is there every day I would hardly call news.

The above story was linked to in this story, which was in the "What's New Today" section (still doesn't mean it's new though--lol):

Uh Oh. The Low-Carb Backlash Gets Ugly


It started out as whispers that grew into rumors that grew into a media onslaught of hurtful accusations and angry finger pointing. Word came that Dr. Robert Atkins, the father of the low-carbohydrate diet fad that as many as 24 million Americans have now embraced, was obese upon his death. Some branded him "Dr. Fatkins." What's more, his heart was not healthy. Could the steak and eggs for breakfast be to blame? Don't look now, but the low-carb backlash has begun.

Steak with Bearnaise sauce, eggs, and bacon; cheddar cheese omelets--don't hold the yolks; Roquefort dressing and silky smooth avocado cream soup made with real cream? WebMD tells you what the Atkins diet is and how it works.

Reuters reports there is a distinct move toward more balanced eating, which could spell doom for the strict high-protein, low-carb Atkins diet. In the long run, that might not be a bad thing. While the diet does work--folks are ecstatic when they can essentially eat all the bacon, eggs, and cream they want and still lose lots of weight--it is made up high-protein foods that are also high in fat and high in cholesterol. And over time, that's not good for a body.

Believe it or not, here's an easy way to lose 10 pounds, courtesy of the American Dietetic Association.

Is there room for pasta and bread on that plate? "Everything in moderation is ultimately where all these things lead to," Douglas Conant, chief executive of Campbell Soup Co., told Reuters. "These diets become fad-like and take on lives of their own...and typically they are not sustainable." Hershey CEO Richard Lenny notes that Extremes are hard to maintain forever and predicts most low-carb followers will eventually converge in the center. While many food manufacturers, Campbell Soup and Hershey among them, are creating new products for low-carb dieters, others are fighting back. The Florida Citrus Commission, which blames the low-carb diet fad for a nearly three-year decline in orange juice sales, has proposed to bite back with a new $6 million television advertising campaign that would "poke fun at the logic of the (low-carb) diets," Mike Malone, the agency's creative director, told the Lakeland, Fla., newspaper The Ledger.

You can effectively fight fat and weight gain if you eat this every day. Click to find out what it is.

But the negative tone of some of the proposed ads has drawn ire. One such ad, called "Grease," shows a man frying bacon, sausage, and other breakfast meats, and then pouring the fat from the skillet into an 8-ounce glass. The spokesman then squeezes an orange into another glass and remarks that some people think the glass of fat is healthy while the glass of orange juice is not, reports The Ledger. The ad's message: Orange juice has no fat or cholesterol and is naturally heart-healthy. Maybe moderation in everything really is the best approach--even if it's not as exciting. Eat your steak and eggs. But eat small amounts so you can also enjoy bread and chocolate. The five most dangerous diet plans are...

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I'm not even touching that one. My thoughts--

Eh....same old same old.

They don't have to hope, the majority of people don't bother to read or research or would even know where to start even if they wanted to.

Thanks God for the internet which made it much easier become aware of new, non-conformist, ideas. Otherwise we would still be at the mercy of the mainstream media.

Hey Cindy! From another NC gal!

Hi christy! Triangle area.....you?

Kinston

Sounds like a press release from the "got milk" folks.
With the new processing magic they are doing that gives us CarbCountdown dairy and lc yogurt-the milk council will be promoting Low Carb by this time next year.

I never knew how much sugar I was getting in a glass of skim milk!!!

Someone should contact the authors and contributors of that article and tell them that all women using low fat dairy products are only injesting sugar needlessly because calcium cannot be absorbed without the presence of fat. This type of advice is not only irresponsible it is very harmful. If anyone can supply me with the emails of these individuals, I will personally set them straight.

I thought about trying to contact the author--but naturally I didn't see any way to give feedback. And it probably wouldn't do much good anyway--there are tons of bad articles and reports out there, and there probably always will be. I think it's just comforting to know that we are doing what's right for our bodies, and it's sad that so many have not figured it out yet. It doesn't make it right to distribute false information, but at least we're smart enough to know better!

OK I found an email address for this Zemel and I really blasted him. Don't think it will help though. Here's what I sent him.

"Your name and advice was quoted in an article condemning the Atkins diet and advising people to eat low-fat dairy products to consume calcium. It is downright irresponsible and outright harmful for a so-called nutrition expert to condone eating low-fat dairy when all evidence shows that calcium cannot be absorbed by the human body without the presence of fat. I can drink gallons of skim milk and my body would not be able to absorb the calcium contained therein. Please do us all a favour and not speak about subjects you have not properly researched.

By the way, I am not following an Atkins diet and do not eat any dairy products whatsoever. I follow the hunter-gatherer way of eating. I do not require any nutritional supplements as I get ample nutrition from my diet including calcium.

Please be informed that in no way can a low carbohydrate way of eating be called a fad diet. Mankind did very well for millions of years eating a hunter gatherer diet,which, by the way, includes ample fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, as well as eggs, meat, seafood and poultry, without the benefit of any low-fat products, grains, beans, soy or frankenfoods such as margarine.

Please feel free to research hunter-gatherer diets as well as the Atkins diet before uttering another word that can contribute to the ill-health and demise of unsuspecting individuals who follow your advice."

Sorry, I got carried away. His email address is

mzemel~utk.edu

People who give adverse advice under the guise of nutritional experts should be blasted as far as I'm concerned whether it will help or not.

Quote:«Eat your steak and eggs. But eat small amounts so you can also enjoy bread and chocolate»

What type of advice is that supposed to be?

Ummm...the advice of someone who thinks it's a virtue to walk around hungry all day?