Last Updated: Tuesday, 19 August, 2003, 14:16 GMT 15:16 UK

Hospital bans Atkins diet

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A hospital has banned the controversial Atkins diet from its menu over fears that it is too unhealthy.

The Norfolk and Norwich Hospital has said the high-fat diet is not balanced enough to aid recovery.

The move follows growing requests from patients for the low-carbohydrate diet which has been championed by the likes of stars Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Patients are being told the hospital can no longer cater specifically for the diet and are being told of the importance of a "balanced" diet to help them recover more quickly.

Senior dietician Maria Skerry said on Tuesday: "We have no evidence to support the use of the Atkins Diet in the long term.

"We don't know how safe it is and people who come into hospital are often vulnerable nutritionally.

"They need a well balanced diet to help them recover."

The hospital, just outside Norwich, has noticed an increasing number of people who have been admitted are asking specifically for the diet.

Although it will not stop patients choosing low carbohydrate options from the standard menu, dieticians will not be making special Atkins diet meals for them.

"We have had a few patients who have come in following the Atkins Diet and asked for special meals to be provided for them so they can continue to follow the diet in hospital, but we don't think that's the right option for a patient while they are in hospital," said Ms Skerry.

"You can understand why people are wanting to try it but we don't know what the long term affects are," she said.

"We see far more people who need to increase their calorie and nutritional intake to help them make a better recovery."

Health experts fear the diet can not only cause bad breath but could lead to kidney damage and loss of bone density in the long term.

People following the diet are encouraged to eat lots of protein like eggs and bacon and to keep clear of sugar and carbohydrates such as pasta, rice and fruit and vegetables.

Wow, gotbeer, your articles are getting me riled up today.

This is a bunch of crap. My first exposure to hospital food was when I visited my Stepdad before and after his heart surgery in January. Do you know what they fed him? Chicken fried steak, gravy, and mashed potatoes! Plus he got pudding, chocolate cake -- he was in heaven, but I was appalled!

Then after I had my son in May there were all kinds of tasty treats on the menu (like pancakes). They told me to make sure I had plenty of fiber, then didn't offer me a single high-fiber choice! I would have killed for a bran muffin at that point.

So all I can say to this is, "Whatever!" As if hospitals' menus are so healthy now. They may as well serve Domino's pizza.

A really sick industry!! ARGH!

Remind me not to eat anything if I ever have to go to the hospital.

These people are fools.

Emily

Is this a contradiction or what? If people are choosing low carb options from the standard menu, guess what the dieticians will be making for them? A low carb meal!
Now, if they remove all low carb options from the menu, there might well be a problem (and I can envision them doing this just to enforce the "no low carb" policy), I can see this being challenged since what they are saying is that the patient does not have a right to chose what foods they will and won't eat and it does not cause any extra work to include low carb fruits and veggies on the menu and let the patient choose what they will.
I can also see this becoming a discrimination issue. Do they force Kosher people to eat non-kosher? How about vegetarians..do they force them to eat meat or do they accomodate the special dietery needs/preferences of one group while denying them to others?
OTOH, there's also the option of simply chosing a different hospital if possible. I know I would.

"People following the diet are encouraged to eat lots of protein like eggs and bacon and to keep clear of sugar and carbohydrates such as pasta, rice and fruit and vegetables."

Once again, we're dealing with folks who have not read the books. As a nurse who has worked plenty of hospitals over the years, and as a patient all too frequently, the food they serve is over cooked, often old, and never ever is anything whole grain offered. If you ask for WW toast, it's the type colored with carmel coloring, at least in the places I've been. Last time I was a patient, my DH and DS brought me food, else I would have starved for lack of anything decent tasting.

Although I could have addressed a wide range of misinformation this article contains, I felt it was clearest not to argue so much with the hospital officials that the BBC was relaying quotes from, but rather hitting the BBC's own article writer in what the author screwed up on. That way, the BBC can't pawn it off on saying "oh, we were merely quoting what somebody ELSE said" - but rather, we can bust the BBC article-writer's sloppy, incorrect reporting of even what the Atkins Diet is in the first place. Accordingly, I sent this to the BBC feedback online form, under the category of "factual errors"
which I found at the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/...errors_form.stm

Your recent article: "Hospital bans Atkins diet" contains numerous factual errors. One example is where you concluded the article by stating:

"People following the diet are encouraged to eat lots of protein like eggs and bacon and to keep clear of sugar and carbohydrates such as pasta, rice and fruit and vegetables."

Whomever it was on your staff that wrote this article clearly did not bother to even roughly familiarize themself with what the Atkins Diet is. Otherwise, they'd have realized that the Atkins diet not only allows - but in fact STRONGLY ENCOURAGES - one to eat vegetables. It also in fact DOES allow partaking in moderate portions of fruits as well. Contrary to what you also misstated, it does not recommend eating "lots of bacon" - in fact, they caution against most commercial varieties of bacon due to it typically containing potentially harmful nitrates.

I expected a better quality of information from you. The error you made is very easy to verify, which makes it a mystery how it was written by the author and slipped past your editor too.

Next time you write about a diet, bother to glance at least at the first couple of chapters, so you won't grossly misinform your readers again.

Good job Gary !

When you see examples of gross minsinformation like it makes you doubt the whole journalistic process. It is obvious that the writer did not even perform the most casual of research when writing this article. He simply repeated what everyone knows about Atkins. Well this makes you wonder about all the other crap that is published and aired that simply repeats and reinforces "what everyone knows".

Scary no ?

It is obvious that this hospital and its personel have not been trained about this diet. They must have learned about it through the media. I don't believe that they think that there is no vegetables on this diet! There are vegetarians that do this way of life, for crying out loud!!!

Black57

well i for one would eat the food at a hospital if you gave me a nose plug and something strong to wash it down.
but to get a little off topic, there is a nurse my mom knows why managed to talk her hospital into serving low carb foods on the bases that carbs slow you down and make you tired after the suger high goes away they have been trying it out and have found the ones that do low carb foods have a slightly better level of preformance :P 'specially with them 12+ hours
Crysania