Nice article on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen last Saturday
http://www.canada.com/search/story....54-42a64dff4161

Canada eats up low-carb craze
Food makers cut out the sugars to cash in on popular Atkins diet
Sharon Kirkey The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, October 25, 2003

It was like any other business gathering, until the men started talking waistlines. Suddenly the hotel's general manager twigged: These guys were serious dieters, many on the famous low-carbohydrate Atkins plan.
Now, Vancouver's Fairmont Waterfront Hotel has gone a little low-carb. The weekly luncheon features at the hotel's Herons restaurant now include two Atkins-inspired entrees, like char grilled beef New York strip loin ("garlic compote, fire roasted vegetables, Roquefort raisin jus") and prosciutto-wrapped free-range chicken supreme ("cream cheese stuffed, sauteed spinach, marsala jus").
About 200 low-carb entrees are now sold each week, about 30 per cent of the entire lunch business.
At the restaurant in another Fairmont hotel in Vancouver, weeks go by where the staff "can't give away a starch," reports Fairmont Hotels & Resorts spokeswoman Jill Killeen.
The hotels are hardly alone: Low-carb consumerism is sweeping the country, driven in part by new research that appears to vindicate a food plan that has flouted mainstream medical dogma for more than 30 years.
Two years ago, you couldn't find a low-carb peanut butter cup at the Lifestyle Market in Victoria if you wrote to Dr. Robert C. Atkins himself. Today, the natural grocer sells not only the cups, but also Dr. Atkins' low-carbohydrate caramel chews, syrup, pancake and muffin mixes.
At Calgary's two Community Natural Foods locations, shoppers will soon be able to add "nearly zero-carb" soybean pasta to their low-carb purchases, says grocery category manager Alan Yee. Customers are "screaming" for low-carb foods, he says. And they're willing to pay more to get them: an Atkins low-carb syrup, for example, retails for about $6 for a 355 millilitre bottle, about twice the cost of leading regular syrup brands.
Even the big players are putting out low-carb feelers: Sleeman Breweries Ltd. has launched Sleeman Clear, the first low-carb beer available in Canada. It contains 2.5 grams of carbohydrates, versus 11 to 17 grams found in regular beer. (So far the beer is available in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and soon to be sold in New Brunswick.) Heinz One Carb Ketchup is expected to hit U.S. grocery shelves next year and McDonald's reportedly plans to introduce low-carb menu choices in select New York state locations starting January.
Carb-restricted diets such as the Atkins plan are based on the premise that diets high in carbohydrates cause blood sugar levels to rise as carbohydrates are broken down into sugar. The pancreas responds by churning out insulin to lower the blood sugar levels. But insulin causes the body to shuttle that extra sugar into muscle and fat cells, where it's stored as "adipose tissue" -- fat.
The two-week "induction," or Phase I of the Atkins plan, encourages dieters to consume liberal combinations of fat and protein in the form of poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and red meat, as well as "pure, natural fat" such as butter and olive oil. Carbohydrates are restricted to 20 grams a day, mostly in the form of salads (an average-sized bowl of cereal contains about 30 grams). But "absolutely no fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables or dairy products other than cheese, cream or butter" are permitted.
In 1972, Dr. Atkins published Diet Revolution. A revised and updated edition published 20 years later spent more than three years on The New York Times bestseller list.
In the preface to the latest edition of Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, the cardiologist argued that an entire nation had been taught through the years to "shrink in terror from a steak or lamb chops" and that the low-fat, high-carbohydrate mantra that was "preached to the public as gospel" created the perfect recipe for today's soaring obesity rates. People may have stopped eating too much fat, but they compensated, not with more vegetables, but with sugary junk foods.
Dr. Atkins died in April, age 72, after falling on a slippery sidewalk outside his New York City office. One month later, in a humbling blow to his detractors, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine reported that the first controlled study of the Atkins diet showed Atkins dieters lost twice as much weight at three and six months compared to people on a conventional high-carbohydrate, low-calorie regimen.
There was no difference in weight loss between the two groups after one year. But, in a finding that shocked many, the Atkins dieters had significantly higher increases in their "good" cholesterol, and bigger drops in their triglycerides, the blood fat that's been linked to heart disease and stroke.
A second study published in the same issue of the journal found that obese patients who followed a low-carbohydrate diet for six months lost, on average, about three times as much weight as low-fat dieters. More significantly, their triglycerides plunged by an average 20 per cent, versus four per cent for the other group. "Our results may be surprising to some people," acknowledged the study's co-leader, Dr. Linda Stern.
Then, earlier this month, Harvard School of Public Health researchers reported that people on a low-carb plan lost more weight during a three-month study than those on a typical low-fat diet -- even though they consumed 300 more calories a day.
The back-to-back studies have left skeptics scratching their heads.
"Through the years, nobody really studied the Atkins diet, and when you look at the composition of it, it has these horrible fats in it -- bacon and eggs and steak every morning for breakfast, just provided you don't take any toast with it," says Dr. Robert Dent, medical director of the weight management clinic at the Ottawa Hospital. "It goes downhill from there.
"I think everybody has been horrified by the diet, but when you actually test it in people, it seems to work out pretty well."
Dr. Dent says there exist many different kinds of "overweight." One major form of obesity occurs in people with metabolic syndrome, a condition that may afflict one in five Canadians. "These people have a lot of insulin resistance, so it's intellectually appealing to think that a carbohydrate-restricted diet might work really well in these people."
But Dr. Dent cautioned the theory hasn't been tested yet. Moreover, he says, there's doubt about whether a low-carb diet improves the cholesterol picture in everyone.
He and others worry about the impact of high levels of fat on other parts of the body. "Are we going to wind up with cancer of the colon or something, because there is a little literature that says colon cancer is associated with the fat in the diet." Other researchers have warned that low-carb, high-protein diets may increase the risk of kidney stones and possibly even bone loss over the long term.
Critics argue that the new studies are still too small to produce meaningful data. Still, the low-carb craze shows no signs of fizzling out.
"I think the secret is, it tastes good," says Dr. Dent. "Humans don't restrict themselves very well. Sure, you have to stay away from the pasta, you have to stay away from the potatoes, you have to stay away from a number of other things. But you get a whole lot of food people really like."
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen

What a great article. Dr Dent was fair in his criticism. He at least sounded open, and not blindly dismissive as many do.

We need more articles like this one. Fair and open-minded articles done by people that did their research ! This article shines by what it doesn't say. Doesn't claim Atkins is a no-carb diet. Mentions the actual consumption of vegetables. Portions are liberal not gorge-fests. Makes Atkins sound scrumptious instead of boring. And she actually used the word DOGMA refering to convential thinking. Makes me suspect she is a closet Atkinist.