This is a low carb perspective on the South Beach Diet by Dr. Byrnes
3. Book Review: The South Beach Diet
The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatston, MD. Rodale, Inc., 2003.
With the popularity of low-carb diets reaching a high point recently, it was only a matter of time before someone adjusted it into "nutritional correctness." Enter the South Beach Diet by cardiologist Arthur Agatston, MD, of Miami, Florida.
The South Beach Diet is most certainly a low-carb eating regime with the usual carbohydrate foods such as bread (even whole grain), fruit, fruit juices, and rice, potatoes, and pasta excluded (or kept to a bare minimum) The emphasis is on high protein foods, non-starchy vegetables, and skimmilk and other non-fat foods. Of course, white sugar is out, as well as the whole gamut of processed carbohydrate snack foods. While there is certainly nothing unhealthful about eliminating or greatly reducing one's intake of carbohydrates and sugar, this book is full of shortcomings and is quite weak on the science which supposedly supports it.
In the first place is the content of the book. Of the books 310 pages, only about 100 are devoted to explaining the diet to readers. Sprinkled within those first 100 pages are real-life stories of people who succeeded on the diet. So the actual amount of writing from Dr. Agatston drops considerably. From page 108 on, however, the book's content is meal plans and recipes in line with the Diet's principles. While lots of the recipes look inviting and tasty, they all suffer from the same problem: They are full of low or non-fat ingredients, non-fat sour cream and half-and-half being favorite ingredients. Any recipe for chicken requires it to be skinless, again to get rid of those nasty saturated fats that Dr.
Agatston thinks are so lethal.
The book makes some bizarre and nonsensical claims about saturated fats. It claims that diets high in saturated fats cause chemical changes in the bloodstream leading to accelerated atherosclerosis and clogged arteries. They also raise the so-called "bad" cholesterol, LDL, which in the author's opinion, elevates one's chances of a heart attack and heart disease. Dr. Agatston is your basic run-of-the-mill cardiologist who adheres to the usual dietary claptrap taught about diet and heart disease. It does not seem to occur to him to check his theories with actual humanhistory. If he had done this, as Dr. Price had done several decades ago, he would have discovered the embarrassing truth that people who traditionally eat diets high in saturated fats do not suffer from heart
attacks or heart disease. It should also be noted here that the book contains no footnotes--not even a bibliography--to support any of the nutritional claims made.
Dr. Agatston gives the thumbs-up to politically-correct fats like canola oil and olive oil, but avoids butter like the plagues he thinks it causes. Instead, processed spreads are advocated and show up in a number of recipes. Nuts are OK, as well, due to their preponderance of monounsaturates. Fish oils are also ranked high on this diet. The author rightly gives the thumbs-down to margarine and shortening because of the trans-fatty acids in them. Despite this, margarine shows up in several of the books' recipes later on. Eggs are also viewed favorably, but egg substitutes show up in the recipes as well. He also totally avoids any dairy product with the fat still in it. The recipes are full of no-fat cheeses, skim milk, fat-free sour cream, etc. One wonders how any of the recipes on this diet could leave one feeling satiated or happy with the taste of the meals because fat is what makes food taste good and is also what makes one feel full after a meal. Animal fats are also the carriers of the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. There is no good source of vitamin A in this diet, something to be aware of considering how much protein one is ingesting. Vitamin A is required by the body to process and metabolize protein.
Though there is certainly nothing unhealthful about cutting out white flour, sugar, and processed foods from your diet, in the long run, the South Beach Diet has too many questionable components to make it a recommended form of eating day in and day out. Though people have certainly lost weight on the diet, the absence of animal fats is unhealthy, as well as the use of margarines, artificial sweeteners, egg substitutes, vegetable and canola oils.
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