The Mail
London, UK
16 May, 2008


Atkins IS better than the GI diet at keeping of the pounds, say scientists

Some swear by Atkins, while others argue that the GI diet is king.

Now, scientists may have settled the debate with a study showing that an Atkins-like high protein diet stops slimmers from piling the pounds back on.

In contrast, the popular GI diet, which distinguishes between "good" and "bad" carbohydrates, seems to do nothing to prevent weight from creeping back up.

Professor Arne Astrup, president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, said results from a study of 250 men and women showed that protein, not carbohydrate, was the key to the battle of the bulge.

Each was asked to follow a selection of diets for six months to work out the best recipe for maintaining weight loss. The diets contained high or low levels of protein, coupled with high or low GI foods.

At the end of the study, those following a high protein diet had done best, barely gaining any weight, no matter what the GI (glycaemic index) of their meals.

Those on a low protein diet piled on the pounds - even when eating lots of supposedly healthy low GI carbohydrates, the European Congress on Obesity heard yesterday.

It is thought the results can be explained by protein's ability to make us feel full for longer than carbohydrates. Protein is also more effective at speeding up the metabolism.

THE ATKINS DIET
A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet followed by three million Britons at the height of its popularity in 2003.

Devised by Robert Atkins, a U.S. heart doctor, it involves eating huge amounts of protein while almost eliminating carbohydrates including fruit.

Breakfast might be a cheese omelette and bacon, followed by lunch of a cheeseburger minus the bun but with salad and dressing. Dinner might consist of fish with buttered vegetables.

Celebrity devotees included Renee Zellweger and Geri Halliwell and, at the height of Atkins mania, Britons snapped up more than 110,000 copies of the diet manual a week.

The plan fell out of favour after being dogged by side-effects such as constipation and mood-swings and allegations that it could increase the risk of heart disease and kidney problems.

THE GI DIET
This in-vogue diet distinguishes between "good" and "bad" carbohydrates.

"Good" carbs, such as beans, vegetables and wholemeal bread, have a low GI which means they slowly release energy from food, curbing hunger pangs.

In contrast, "bad" carbs, such as white bread, white rice and refined breakfast cereals, have a high GI and are less effective at keeping hunger at bay.

Breakfast could be porridge with wholemeal toast, followed by lentil soup for lunch and spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner.

On the plus side, it is easy to find low GI versions of most foods, making the diet relatively simple to follow.

But it can be difficult to work out the GI of an entire meal. And some low GI foods - such as chocolate and crisps - are high in fat or salt.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_page_id=1797

Well, that wouldn't provide even half the 80g of protein I should have per day.

Pointedly NOT saying, "carbohydrates increase blood sugar and insulin which stores more fat and prevents usage of that fat."

That one fact alone, were it known to more people, could change the world.


I never understood this huge amount of protein thing. Atkins himself said his diet was a high FAT diet. The protein is only high compared to the pathetic recommendations of the government.


Sure it could, but why is it that every reference to the atkins diet has to involve bacon and cheeseburgers? As if there isn't just as much basis for chicken and broccoli or salmon and asparagus. It's almost a deliberate bias in writing on its own, like "without MY saying, the readers are supposed to infer that ARTERY CLOGGING SATURATED FAT cannot be healthy and everyone knows those things have it so WHAT A CRAZY DIET!"


Most people have chronic or recurring bowel issues. The sales of metamucil and related products make this clear. There's also god knows how many drugs with side effects related to that. Including whatever that stupid thing they sell at walmart is that has the side effect of spontaneous diarrhea! Bowel problems ought to be temporary.


Anything that radically affects your biochemistry is going to affect your psychology, and in a world of people massively medicated for depression and PMS both by prescription and OTC, I hardly think a week of feeling lousy to "detox" oughtta be a real issue.


Allegations made almost entirely by the very sources who most stand to benefit financially from seeing any health-inducing eating plan stopped before it saves their future patient$.

Thanks Demi.






The first statement "to make us feel full for longer" can be translated this way. To feel full is the same as to be satiated. To satiate means to satisfy hunger. Hunger is a function of nutrients availability. To provide nutrients is to nourish. To be full of nutrients is to be nutritious. So the full statement can be translated this way:

"It is thought the results can be explained by protein's ability to nourish us better than carbohydrates."


The second statement "at speeding up the metabolism" makes several assumptions. One, that protein by itself acts as a stimulant. Two, that carbohydrates by themselves act as a stimulant. Three, that protein is better at it than carbs. Four, that the said stimulus is independent of a different mechanism that could otherwise explain why protein appears to act the way it does in this comparison. I'm speaking, of course, of the tendency of carbohydrates to partition fuel and to make a portion of this fuel unavailable to lean tissue by locking it in adipose tissue and thus force energy expenditure to slow down in response to this caloric deficit.

It's not protein that stimulates energy expenditure. It's the carbs that reduces energy expenditure. So, in comparison, when cutting out carbs and adding protein, we can conclude that the resulting increase in energy expenditure is a result of the added protein. But in fact it's a direct result of the increased fuel availability through the reduction of carbs and thus insulin and the subsequent release of fat into the bloodstream.

The assumption that carbs is somewhat a stimulant is flawed for the same reason. But also for another different reason. Eating too much carbs in one sitting will give us a sugar rush. Especially refined carbs. This works fine for the first few times but we develop insulin resistance as a defense against glucose poisoning and thus the stimulating effect of carbs diminishes gradually until we can't get a response anymore. So carbs aren't such a stimulant and so the statement is rather incorrect in that respect.

Now that protein and carbs have been shown to not be stimulants in and of themselves, it's logical to conclude that the statement is incorrect in its entirety. We can also conclude that the apparent enhanced metabolism from cutting carbs and adding protein is in fact a return to normal metabolism which would lend us to conclude further that our metabolism was depressed by the ingestion of carbs in the first place. So a more accurate statement would read something like this:

"Protein is also less effective at depressing the metabolism."


Or we could state it this way:

Carbohydrates is less nourishing than protein. And carbohydrates are also more effective at depressing the metabolism.

Thanks for posting the article, Demi!

I read it in the paper today and rushed online to read and post a comment, which wasnt accepted because their message board is down for maintenance till Monday. Luckily I composed my comment offline so have it saved to repost then!!

I think it's great that the scientific results are showing us the truth about Atkins against carbs. Too bad there are still negative conotations thrown into this article about Atkins, even when the evidence points otherwise.

This supports the "a carb is a carb" theory. Unlike the "a calorie is a calorie" theory though, the carb theory holds water.

The word "fat" was used one time in the story, and that one time, in the last sentence, associated it with "salt" as if they were both the most deadly of all poisons.

They are afraid to say "Fat" in any benevolent context. Diet scientists are, the press is, we all are. I hesitate to mention it when people ask me about my diet.

Of course I do, partly because we should, to be accurate, but partly just to watch their faces go through twelve emotional facades at once.

Can you imagine a world-renowned food/nutritional scientist making the pronouncement... "fat is good, carbs are evil, salt is a benign flavor enhancer and fiber is a waste of time"

Not in my lifetime, unfortunately.

Have you read GCBC? That is almost exactly what Taubes, a respected science writer, declares. So far, the crucifixions have been minimal.

That's 'cause they can't reach him for the 50 million fat people guarding him like an international treasure.

That would be a little intimidating. I'm one of those fat people who carry it fairly high, and I'm told I can be quite formidable in appearance. More like a rhino than a hippopotamus. About five hundred of me would be enough.

If that picture is of you, Baerdric, it doesn't show at all... even though I can't really see past your neck.

The problem is, he has no scientific cred. (as a researcher in the field of nutrition, that is) He is a physicist, by training, but he is, after all, just a journalist.

What he is trying to do, is to get the medical community onside, to the extent that an honest, directed, specific study of the 'carbohydrate hypothesis' as he calls it, is funded in earnest. We should all pull for that to happen.

Yah...no I mean it's me, but at 220, not 360.

Taubes doesn't need creds in the field, he is not saying anything about what he did or tested or whatever, he is saying what qualified scientists in the field said and tested and experimented with.

But even then, in the real world, what matters is not the man, or the school, but the quality of the experiment. As opposed to surveys or "research", an experiment, to be good, must isolate one fact and demonstrate it beyond reproach. That means if Bob the gardner does the experiment, it will show the same fact as if a hundred "qualified" scientists did it. "If you push down on this end of the lever, the other end will go up", works for every one, no matter their creds.

The information in GCBC seems largely of that sort. Hard to villify the man enough to destroy that, which is why those who villify the book stay so very far away from the facts.