Colour me cynical (it suits me to a tee) but my opinion of the capabilities and ethics of the British public sector has sunk so low, that I am now inclined to regard their frequent pronouncements as a sort of inverse benchmark.
So when the Food Standards Agency issues an official warning about the allged perils of the Atkins Diet, my instincts tell me to draw the very opposite conclusion:
The first official warning about the dangers of the Atkins diet has been issued by the Government amid concern about the rising number of people opting for the high-fat, high-protein regime.
The Food Standards Agency, which is responsible for all the Government’s nutritional guidance, has published a statement alerting the public to the health risks of low-carbohydrate diets, including Atkins, claiming that they are linked to heart disease, cancer and even obesity
Surely ‘obesity’ is the one thing that devotees of the late Dr.Atkins claim to have conquered? And that word ‘linked’ again. It is fast developing a reputation as quite the most manipulative term in the English language. By employing the word ‘linked’ in any sort of press release one can convey a sense of ominous threat without the bothersome necessity of explaining precise details or producing so much as one iota of empirical evidence.
I am not sufficiently familiar with these people to question their motives but their methods alone are sufficient to leave me with the firm impression that the Atkins diet is not only healthy but also very effective. Get guzzling that protein.
There are so many aspects to this (none of them pleasant) that it’s hard to know where to start. One of the ones that intrigues me the most is that these self-styled ‘experts’ have presided over a lengthy period where average UK calorie and fat consumption has been falling, while we have been getting fatter. Somehow, they appear not to have understood that this troubling statistic undermines their ‘science’.
I have no personal brief for the Atkins diet (I tried it and it made me feel worse than when I last had ‘flu) but this sort of knee-jerk nonsense from a pack of pseudo-scientists probably has more to do with their worldview than it does a test tube.
Much modern dietary theory is shot full of holes and bears a chilling consanguinity with the general hair-shirtism that underlies much Leftist thinking.
The Left grew out of the swamp of religious non-conformism and still has many roots sucking up its fetid conceits. Self-denial, the benefits of suffering, doing that which we dislike and shunning that which we instinctively crave, are all supposed to be ‘good for you’.
Even better when this just happens to weld us in dietary solidarity with Third World peasants and, better still, stops us ‘murdering’ animals for meat. Can’t you feel that self-righteous glow as you ladle-up the spinach?
Most people would probably prefer a pork chop to a plate of greens – so is it any wonder that the health Nazis would rather we lived on the former? They are incapable of seeing the world in any other way and cast their ‘science’ accordingly.
For motives, I don’t think you have to look beyond orthodoxy and pride. If Atkins is right, then legions of nutritionists and doctors are not just wrong, they have been giving us downright dangerous advice. You know, like when they told us to eschew butter in favor of delicious healthy margarine, only to discover decades later that transfats may well be Doctor Frankenstein’s special deluxe artery clogger. I’m still waiting for the apology on that one…or at least an acknowledgement that they done us wrong.
Call me sentimental, but I’m betting that when we finally work out why Americans have gotten so fat in the last twenty years (and we have, too. It’s amazing to walk down the street and have a gawk at the size of us), it’ll turn out to be not because we ignored the advice of nutritionists, but because we took the advice of nutritionists.
Eleven servings of carbs a day? What’re they, nuts?
“Most people would probably prefer a pork chop to a plate of greens – so is it any wonder that the health Nazis would rather we lived on the former?”
Umm, and yes, I did mean ‘the latter’.
My apologies.
Well, most people who take up Atkins are obese, so I guess it is “linked” to obesity the same way antibiotics are linked to infection.
I remember recently seeing a study where they compared calorie intakes of modern Americans to the calorie intakes of a century ago, and they found that despite the “supersized” meals and whatnot, the calorie intake is virtually identical. The study’s authors hypothesized that the obesity epidemic is therefore not the result of a fatty diet, as so many people think, but of an unwillingness to do even the most basic forms of exercise, such as walking two blocks to the store or taking the stairs.
That’s really the only problem I see with so many diet crazes… so many of their adherents atempt to use calorie restriction to the exclusion of exercise, when the exercise is the best thing they could do for their health.
David Carr is so right here to reject the BMA’s useless committee pronouncements, whether or not his high-level theory about inverse benchmarking is correct.
>’Cutting out starchy foods, or any food group, can be bad for your health because you could be missing out on a range of nutrients,’ (BMA in Guardian)
This is circular. Also, it also ignores the fact that of fats, proteins & carbs, the only group you can survive without is carbs. People have lived for years on naught but reindeer meat.
>’High-fat diets are also associated with obesity, which is increasing in the UK’
This asserts nothing about the cause of obesity. However it does accord with the false common sense notion that eating fat makes you fat.
‘eating a diet that is high in fat could increase your chances of developing coronary heart disease.’
More of the art of writing without actually saying anything. No causes, no explanations, no justification for expensive and distracting committees.
‘This type of diet also tends to be unrealistic and dull, and not palatable enough to be tolerated for a long time.’
How do they know? And why is this the business of the BMA or of any doctor?
>she does not include a warning about the possible risk of kidney or liver disease for anyone who spends a long time on the diet (Guardian)
However, she does mention some of the known large costs of being fat (more likely to develop diabetes & certain cancers). And what about not being able to run up the stairs? Or high blood pressure? (the causal mechanisms are more obvious here, just ask an engineer). These are the risks against which the (theoretical) kidney damage risk must be weighed.
Having mentioned diabetes, I was surprised to learn here
http://www.settingtheworldtorights.com/node.php?id=196
..that it might not be on the increase as was generally thought recently.
You might be assuming I’m a rabid low-carb fanatic. Not actually true. Yes, I believe that a high proportion of sugary and starchy foods especially when consumed around the clock tends to make you fat. However, this piece of knowledge is no more operationally helpful than knowing that a car is brought to rest by friction at the disc brakes.
The question should become: *why* do people crave sugar all the time? I don’t believe the answer is just because their blood sugar has plummeted after the last insulin-generating binge. The problem is a philosophical one and it’s something that Robert Atkins and Barry Groves haven’t addressed.
The answer is, because they’re bored or stressed (or they want to party!)
The way to refute the fructose-imbibing theory will be something along the lines of “all this jumping about and fizzing with temporary energy isn’t solving the underlying problem of escaping from my menial job”, or similar.
On a related topic, having your life micro-managed by morons could be a surer route to heart disease, see the Whitehall Study:
http://www.workhealth.org/projects/pwhitew.html
(sorry to use the weasel word ‘could’ but, hey, I’m no expert and I’m not charging the taxpayer)
B. Durbin wrote:
>That’s really the only problem I see with so many diet crazes… so many of their adherents atempt to use calorie restriction to the exclusion of exercise, when the exercise is the best thing they could do for their health.
Exercise drives down blood sugar and therefore suceeds for the same reason Atkins does. But exercise, if we ignore social benefits, fashion, and the runner’s high, takes up time and leads to physical injuries which reduce quality of life permanently. Movement, above a small minimum, really isn’t necessary for its own sake. Hilarious also that warming up has been scientifically shown to be pointless and that the only way to protect muscles is to injure them first.
I agree with you about calories being irrelevant. As if the body burns all its ‘food groups’ separately in pure oxygen like they do in lab calorimeters…
One of the reasons calorie intake is irrelevant is that it is crucial how quickly those calories are made available to your body. If I eat a plate of pasta I will put on less weight than if I eat the equivalent calories in sugar, because the body’s fat storage machinery is not activated. For this reason, many dieticians are now quoting the glycaemic index of foods (a measure of how quickly the food is converted to glucose) as well as how many calories the food contains. It isn’t the number of calories people consume that has changed, but in what form those calories are consumed.
In the end you must activate the body’s stored-fat-burning systems and the way to do that is via lowering calorie intakes and (especially) exercising. Fat versus carbs calories intake is secondary, especially when the carbs are starches.
Tom Robinson, do you have a link for that claim about warming up being “scientifically pointless”? I would be very surprised if that were the case.
ChrisV,
Did I say “warming up”? Ah yes, I did. *shame*. I ought to have said “stretching before exercise”. I had in mind something I read in New Scientist a few years ago referring to some work done in Australia.
My apologies.
S. Weasel writes:
Call me sentimental, but I’m betting that when we finally work out why Americans have gotten so fat in the last twenty years (and we have, too. It’s amazing to walk down the street and have a gawk at the size of us), it’ll turn out to be not because we ignored the advice of nutritionists, but because we took the advice of nutritionists.
I think this point is why the nutritionists are so keen to attack the Atkins diet. If the truth is that they caused obesity, as you suggest, the apple pies really will hit the ventilation unit.
There is a psychological problem with Atkins. Once you get down to a weight you can live with, you don’t stick to it strictly enough, let the odd beer and ice-cream slip through, cut down on the necessary exercise, and stay static with your weight loss, a situation I’m currently in.
Yes, if you dramatically increase your protein intake, and your kidneys are too feeble to deal with the increasing uric acid outflows (thereby possibly causing rare cases of urea crystal kidney stones), you could be in trouble, but as far as I can make out, that appears to be about the only ‘major’ health risk.
The solution to this is get your kidneys tested out before you start the diet, drink plenty of water as the diet says, and don’t go totally mad by eating five steaks a day, seven days a week. Just eat what you normally would, but take out the carbs, and replace that ‘low-fat’ mayonnaise, with proper mayonnaise, eat cream with fruit, rather than ice-cream, eat proper meat rather than processed rubbish, and stop cutting off the fat, to increase your lost-carb energy inflow.
Right, I must get back into the pool again, tomorrow night, and stop all this procrastination.
Though I dare say the Health and Safety Executive would warn me about chlorine levels in swimming pool water! 🙂
Andy, excellent response to all the cynics and doubters. You speak from experience and I can totally relate to your analysis of the Atkins diet.
The fact is that we can speculate about certain diets and critique them ’till the cows come home. It’s not going to get us anywhere.
First and foremost it’s important to find a diet that is compatible with one’s lifestyle. If you don’t think Atkins is healthy because of some negative press, then don’t do it. Before you start any diet it’s wise to consult a doctor as each individual body is different and may react differently.
To lose weight aerobic exercise is key (treadmill, running etc.), especially in the mornings to really fire up your metabolism.
My personal secret was to cut out refined sugar (ice cream and cakes etc.) and starch (pasta, cereals, tortillas, white flour etc.)
I ate a lot of salmon, tofu, halibut, lentils, egg whites, whole grain bread, peanut butter, cottage cheese, lemons and raw vegetables. I drank 1 and 1/2 gallons of water each day and put apple cider vinegar in the last 1/2 gallon. I also ran 2.5 miles in the morning before going to work.
CHANGE WILL NOT HAPPEN OVERNIGHT….persistence is key. It’s like the Nike commercial, “Just Do It”.