Effects of a
Low Carbohydrate Diet

No matter what Atkins or other diet books tell you, the balance of evidence clearly shows that saturated animal fat is bad for you and is associated with increased risk of cancer [Journal of the National Cancer Institute 95 (2003): p.1079], diabetes, and heart disease. [WHO Technical Report Series 916, 2003]  Even independent of the effects on obesity, meat consumption itself has been related to increased risk of coronary heart disease [Preventive Medicine 13 (1984): p.490] and for over 40 years medical reviews have also shown the detrimental impact of dietary cholesterol consumption. [Geriatrics (1961): p.407]

The Chair of the American Medical Association's Council on Food and Nutrition explained in testimony before Congress why the AMA felt they had to formally publish an official condemnation of the Atkins Diet: "It became apparent that the (Atkins) diet as recommended poses a serious threat to health."  "People need to wake up to the reality," Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop writes, that the Atkins Diet is "unhealthy and can be dangerous." [Shape Up America!  news release, 29 December 2003]

The largest organization of food and nutrition professionals in the world calls the Atkins Diet "a nightmare of a diet." [Journal of the American Dietetic Association 102 (2002): p.260]  The official spokesperson elaborated: "The Atkins Diet and its ilk – any eating regimen that encourages gorging on bacon, cream and butter while shunning apples, all in the name of weight loss – are a dietitian's nightmare."  The ADA has been warning Americans about the potential hazards of the Atkins Diet for almost 30 years now. [Journal of the American Dietetic Association 66 (1975): p.277]

The National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious scientific body in the United States, agrees with the AMA and the ADA in opposing the Atkins Diet.  So does the American Cancer Society. [American Cancer Society. Weighing In on low carb Diets, 2004]  And the American Heart Association. [Circulation 104 (2001): p.1869]  And the Cleveland Clinic [The Cleveland Clinic. High Protein, Low Carbohydrate Diets, August 2003], and Johns Hopkins [Diabetes 2004. Johns Hopkins University White Paper, 2004], and the American Kidney Fund [American Kidney Fund news release, 25 April 2002], and the American College of Sports Medicine [Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 33 (2001): p.2145], and the National Institutes of Health [NIH Publ. No. 94-3700, 1993].

In fact there does not seem to be a single major governmental or nonprofit medical, nutrition or science-based organization in the world that supports the Atkins Diet. [Circulation 104 (2001): p.1869]  As a 2004 medical journal review concluded, the Atkins Diet "runs counter to all the current evidence-based dietary recommendations." [Journal of the American College of Cardiology 43 (2004): p.725]

A 2003 review of the safety of low carbohydrate diets reeled off an alarming list of potential problems: "Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid [cholesterol] abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet." [Asia Pacific Journal Clinical Nutrition, 12: pp. 396-404 (2003)]

Weight Loss
This being the main objective of any diet, it is interesting to note that even if people can handle the side-effects of the diet, there are no data to show that the initial rapid weight loss on diets such as the Atkins Diet can be maintained long term.  Many of the studies on the Atkins Diet have lasted only a few days [Journal of the American Medical Association 289 (2003): p.1837]; the longest the Atkins Diet has ever been studied is one year.

There have been 3 such year-long studies and not a single one showed significantly more weight lost at the end of the year on the Atkins Diet than on the control diets.  In the year-long comparison of the Atkins Diet to Dean Ornish's vegetarian diet, Weight Watchers, and The Zone Diet, the Atkins Diet came last in terms of weight lost at the end of the year.  Ornish's near-vegan diet seemed to show the most weight loss. [Dansinger, M.L., Gleason, J. L., Griffith, J.L., et al., "One Year Effectiveness of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone Diets in Decreasing Body Weight and Heart Disease Risk", Presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions November 12, 2003 in Orlando, Florida.]

The most formal study of lasting weight loss is the highly respected National Weight Control Registry, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  For over 10 years, the Registry has tracked the habits of thousands of successful dieters.  They now have 5,000 Americans confirmed to have lost an average of 70 pounds and able to prove they have kept it off for at least 6 years.  After a decade of rigorously tracking those who most successfully lost weight – and kept it off – one of the chief investigators told everyone in an interview what they found: "Almost nobody's on a low carbohydrate diet." [Reason, March 2003]

These researchers, led by a team at Brown and the University of Colorado, found that the people most successful in losing and maintaining their weight were eating high carbohydrate diets – five times as many carbs as Atkins proscribes in the "weight loss" phase of his diet [American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 66 (1997): p.239].  Out of the thousands of people in the National Weight Control Registry, fewer than 1% follow a diet similar to the Atkins program.  "We can't find more than a handful of people who follow the Atkins program in the registry," said one chief investigator, "and, believe me, we've tried." [The Washington Post, 27 August 2002]

Ketosis
We burn fat all the time; it's only when one is carbohydrate deficient and has to burn fat ineffectively that one goes into a state of ketosis – when you have so much acetone in your blood that it noticeably spills out into your lungs, or so many other ketones that they spill out into your urine.

In biochemistry class, doctors learn that fat "burns in the flame of carbohydrate."  When you're eating enough carbohydrates, fat can be completely broken down as well.  But when your body runs out of carb fuel to burn, your body's only choice is to burn fat inefficiently using a pathway that produces toxic byproducts like acetone and other ketones.

Symptoms of ketosis include general tiredness, abrupt or gradually increasing weakness, dizziness, headaches, confusion, abdominal pain, irritability, nausea and vomiting, sleep problems and bad breath. [Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine 68(2001): p.761]

In World War II, the Canadian Army had an illuminating experience with ketogenic diets.  For emergency rations, infantry troops had pemmican, which is basically a carbohydrate-free mixture of beef jerky and suet (animal fat).  The performance of the infantrymen forced to live off pemmican deteriorated so rapidly, they incapacitate them in a matter of days.  As reported in the journal War Medicine in 1945, "On the morning of the fourth day of the diet, physical examination revealed a group of listless, dehydrated men with drawn faces and sunken eyeballs, whose breath smelled strongly of acetone." [War Medicine 7 (1945): p.345]

A ketogenic diet, concluded one medical review, "can be associated with significant toxicity." [Epilepsia 39 (1998): p.744]

In Contrast...
Every single long-term prospective cohort study ever performed on the foods that diets such as Atkins' restrict – fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains – show that they protect people from the nations' biggest killer: heart disease. [Journal of the American Medical Association 288(2002):2569]

Harvard studied 75,000 women for a decade and the results suggest that the more whole grains people eat – like brown rice and whole wheat bread – the lower their risk of having a heart attack. [American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 70 (1999): p.412]  Harvard studied 40,000 men for a decade and suggested that eating whole grains may cut one's risk of developing diabetes by more than half. [American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 76 (2002): p.535]

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