I just finished listening to Talk of the Nation, Science Friday on National Public Radio. The topic was supposed to be dietary choices, so they had on Dean Ornish, Dr. Trager from Atkins shop & some guy who spoke so little I don't even know who he was or where he was from.

Of course, the show quickly fell into the old battle of Ornish vs. Atkins, with Ornish totally dominating the conversation. He was allowed to steer the conversation anywhere he wanted to go. The host did, on a couple of occasions, try to reel Ornish in, but Ornish kept going off on whatever tangent suited him. He especially likes the reversal of heart disease topic. It seems that he feels most comfortable with a few statements like, High Fat diets like Atkins mortgage your health, that he likes to back up with long tangents about studies or research . That one really bugged me. I don't think that Dr. Atkins, or any low-carb plans, espouse a high fat diet, but rather a reduced carb intake in conjunction with a sensible amount of veggies & other healthful foods. He couldn't focus on low-carb but kept saying things like you can't live on pork rinds and cheese burgers and not expect to get heart disease .

When Ornish was presented with any questions about the fact that many people don't feel they can (because of experience) follow his basically vegetarian diet, he rambled on and on about heart disease or prattled on about his jargon-laden studies. If I didn't know anything at all on this topic, I wouldn't have gained any knowledge by listening to him or this show.

You have to give Ornish points for being passionate about his cause, but he is very inflamatory and seems to try to instill paranoia, rather than clear cut, definitive evidence that eating 10 - 20% fat, or basically a vegetarian diet, is going to be a healthful maintenace diet that most people can live with.

Whooo! Well, Thanks for reading MY ramblings!

I heard it too--I loved how both kept saying that each had a diet that no one could eat, and "maybe" a few people had lost weight/lowered their risk for heart disease, but they were the exceptions.

It was an interesting debate with the moderator having to reel in the participants some of the time and Ornish running off on his own tangents.

What I found interesting was the lack on his and the atkins advocate willingness to recognize that they each have excellent points but each diet was and is designed for a different purpose.

While Atkins is a weight control program, the other was essentially a program designed to address specific health problems with weight as a secondary issue...the poor guy from the NIH made that point over and over...his position supported both and his information was a good way to view a maintainence phase

I missed the show - but my husband listened to it. He said that the most interesting part of the show - was the call in discussions. The bulk of the support (i.e. I have done this successfully) came from folks following the low carb programs. He said the bulk of calls that discussed the low fat / low calorie programs talked about how they could not sustain that kind of way of eating for any long term period and often did not have any success even when they were sticking to it religiously.