EDIT: my previous thread is here

I have recently read the following books...

Eat, Drink, and be Healthy by Walter Willett

The New Glucose Revolution by Jennie Brand-Miller

Atkins for Life by Robert Atkins

Of the three, I find Willett's book the most useful. The book goes into a fair amount of detail about the science of carbs, protein, and fats; explains the different kinds of each and how they affect your body; talks about glycemic index, glycemic load and how it should affect your diet; and integrates all this knowledge into a cohesive eating plan and revised food pyramid. It is not a weight loss book, but a general guide to healthy eating.

Brand-Miller's book focuses mainly on the glycemic index, but is less comprehensive than Willet's as far as general nutrional advice. Perhaps this is a function of the book being a bit out of date. It was originally published back in 1996 (although they are up to the 5th edition now).

Atkins for Life is a lighter read - it has large print and large margins, and doesn't go into nearly as much detail as Willett does. It also contains frequent Atkins trademarked terms such as ACE (Atkins Carbohydate Equivalent - the max amount of carbs you can eat and not gain weight); these give it more of a "trying to sell you something" feel to it than the other two books. It clears up some misconceptions I had by explaining the different phases of Atkins (induction, ongoing weight loss, approaching goal weight, and maintenance).

I also get the feeling that Atkins moderated his approach somewhat in his last years, because the book refers to "a controlled carb lifestyle not a low-carb lifestyle" (not an exact quote, but something along those lines), and while stating that saturated fats are not bad for you, does say that you shouldn't overdo them either.

The synthesis of all this in my head is
1) keep an open mind... nutritional science evolves
2) optimal diet varies based on the individual involved and their goals. For example, ketosis may be an effective way to lose weight for folks who have a lot of weight to lose and want to make pure weight loss their priority. Conversely, there may be better choices for more active individuals with less weight to lose.
3) There is actually a fair amount of convergence between Willett and the Atkins maintenance diet. Key differences are on saturated fats, and using carbs, rather than calories, to control total food intake.

This Willett article about sums up my present beliefs.

As an aside... my story: I am male, 5'10", 34, and weighed 174 lbs at the beginning of April. I have always been a very thin person so the development of a pot belly made me look odd indeed. When I hit size 36 pants that triggered a motivation to do something about it. Since then I've been swimming 3x a week for 30 mins, walking 3x a week for 30 mins, I've cut out all the junk food (except for one helping on weekends), and eating more fruits and vegetables. No refined white-flour carbohydrates, no trans fats, switched to half-fat cheese, low-fat yoghurt, whole grain bread, and 1% milk.
EDIT: now down to 157 lbs.

Wondering if you've read Dr. Atkins new diet revolution...

No, I haven't. Can you compare that book and Atkins for Life?

"Recent studies comparing low-carb intakes vs. low-fat intakes have consistently shown that low-carb (high-fat) regimens improve cardiovascular risk factors. These findings have been so consistent among recent studies that even skeptics in the medical community are beginning to revisit their views on the Atkins Nutritional Approach"

- From a recent Atkins press release.

Westerner, I think you will find that its people like Willett who are changing their views (if ever so slowly). He has been recently quoted as saying that the Atkins approach can not be dismissed in the light of recent studies showing low carb/ reduced carb (it doesn't matter what you call it!) not only is a more effective way of losing weight, but also improves lipid profiles (and hence CHD risks).

While I don't have a great problem with the GI/GL concept (it is after all just a watered down version of low carb), I do find it strange that 'scientists' like Brand Miller seem to enjoy spreading wildly inaccurate information about ‘ordinary’ reduced carb diets.

http://www.theomnivore.com/low_GI_vs_low_carb.html

- it certainly makes you ponder her motives.

You seem to be mixing your reduced carb diet (congratulations) with elements of the old discredited low fat theory. It seems to me there is now plenty of evidence that healthy saturated fat is not only not harmful, but a good source of nutrients in the absence of excessive carbohydrates.

I suggest you add Mary Enig to your reading list, and decide for yourself.

http://www.westonaprice.org/know_your_fats/skinny.html

Cheers,

Malcolm

I am essentially in agreement with this.


He does seem to agree that Atkins helps very overweight people lose weight faster than low fat diets, in the short term (my emphasis). See the link to Willett's article I posted above.


You posted this last time around and I read it then. What I see there, is her slamming low carb diets and then being disputed by a low carb proponent. Who is right? I don't know. In any case it doesn't mean that her book is entirely without merit - her book is about GI/GL, not Atkins bashing. And as I understand it, GI/GL is a guideline on how carbs affect blood sugar, but is not the sole indicator of carb quality.


I wouldn't call my diet reduced carb, so much as reduced junk carb. I still eat whole grain bread and Cheerios regularly. I've eliminated cake, cookies, candy and donuts and reduced potatoes to about once a week, while adding olive oil.

I'll see if I can get hold of Enig's book.

Yes well Willett has moved closer to accepting the validity of the 'Atkins' approach since that January article (since the lastest Duke study results).

He also is not immune to fudging the facts (like Brand Miller) - he says this;

"The idea that saturated fat was a major underlying factor for heart disease did come about largely from the work of Ancel Keys, where he looked at various countries around the world and looked at their heart disease rates, and found that they were strongly correlated with saturated fat in the diet."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...ws/willett.html - (the Taubes interview is more enlightening)

What he refuses to tell you is;

"Keys plotted the coronary heart disease (CHD) death rates from a mere six countries on a graph, and was able to show an almost perfect correlation between fat consumption and CHD mortality (3). However, Keys had hand-picked his countries; data was actually available for 22 countries at the time, and when another group of researchers later plotted the data from all these countries on a graph, Key's correlation vanished into thin air (4). Keys, however, was on the nutrition advisory committee of the powerful American Heart Association, and his erroneous theories were officially incorporated into AHA dietary guidelines in 1961"

http://www.theomnivore.com/commonmy...wcarbdiets.html

- hardly a sound basis for declaring saturated fat to be dangerous, but at least Willet acknowledges the source of this nonsense!

Any diet which eliminates "cake, cookies, candy and donuts and reduced potatoes " and "refined white flour carbohydrates" is a reduced carb diet (whatever you call it). I am intrigued as to the nutritional qualities that Cheerios bring to your diet, that suggest they should not be classified as "junk carb"!

Cheers,

Malcolm

I can tell you about Cheerios--my son eats them once in a blue moon! LOL They're highly processed oatmeal that is so full of air even one whole cup of them has very few carbohydrates for the bulk. They're also really, really good with cream!

Okay--seriously now. According to the American Heart Association, oatmeal is supposed to be really good for our hearts as it's low cholesterol, etc., etc. Since we now know that dietery cholesterol isn't what affects our body's cholesterol levels, any food that's 'Heart Smart' should fairly well be moot.

If a person wants to put oats into their diet, then go grab a package of Bob's Red Mill organically grown Scottish or Steel Cut oats. Now those are healthy oats!

Westerner, it's great that you've found a way to lose weight that works for you. Men are just, well I'd rather not way, when it comes to weight loss, because usually all they have to do is modify a little here and there and the weight starts falling off.

We women on the other hand have a bit of a tougher time. Then there are those of us who couldn't follow any other type of diet (low fat, high carb specifically) because it did such horrid things to our blood sugar that we were raving lunatics and/or completely mad the whole time we were on them (mood problems being a result of up and down blood sugar levels as well as being hungry all the time because carbohydrates never satiated our appetites).

Just to put it in a timeline perspective, the book that you gave a link to above was published in 2002, the article in Janurary of 2004. The quote that Malcolm referred to by Willett was made in the past few months (2004), so yes...it appears that his views on low carb/controlled carb methods is changing in view of recent studies.

I'm not sure you can conclusively state that Willett has moved closer to Atkins since January based on the PBS interview transcript alone. He answers a couple of questions about it, but a verbal response during an interview does not carry the weight of a written article. Perhaps you know of other recent Willett articles that support your claim?

EDIT: I found Willett's editorial on the Duke studies - see below.



I resent you impugning Willett's motives. A scientist who has the courage to revise long-held views in the face of new evidence, and that's what Willett has done, shows intellectual honesty and is deserving of respect. While Willett, like any expert, probably seeks public recognition and to sell his book, he is not (to my knowledge) beholden to any particular commercial interest. That does not make him right about everything, but it does mean it's likely that he speaks in good faith. Atkins, on the other hand, has a multimillion dollar business going by plastering those little red A's all over food products. While that does not mean everything coming out of the Atkins organization is without merit, it does mean they have a large vested interest in what they're advocating.



Shrug. I'm used to my breakfast cereal and Cheerios is one of the better ones - it's made from whole grain rolled oats, including oat bran - not puffed wheat. It has only 1 gram of sugar per 1-cup serving, and 3 grams of dietary fibre. As Lila mentioned, steel cut organic oats might be better, but you can't beat the convenience of ready-to-eat cereal. Junk carbs? Not. And I like the taste, especially with fruit.

The PBS link is useful... I'm going to investigate what some of the other intereviewees have to say and possibly read some of their books. Taubes, however, stands discredited in my eyes, because Willett and other authorities that he intereviewed for his 2002 NY Times article later went on record that Taubes deceived them and/or quoted them out of context in order to exaggerate their level of support for Atkins.

See my response to Malcolm above. They're also great with blueberries and bananas.



Fair enough. I sympathize, and am glad you've found a diet that works for you as well.

I've tracked down the full text of Willett's editorial on the Duke studies and
posted it here.

Some excerpts:
We can no longer dismiss very-low-carbohydrate diets.

... the diminished effects of low-carbohydrate diets at 12 months emphasize the need for additional randomized trials that last for longer than 1 year and that monitor weight and lipid profile.

Dr. Atkins deserves credit for his observations that many persons can control their weight by greatly reducing carbohydrate intake and for his funding of trials by independent investigators. Nevertheless, advocating unlimited servings of beef, sausage, and butter would not serve our overweight patients well.

considerable evidence suggests that replacing red and processed meats with a combination of fish, nuts, legumes, and poultry would reduce the risks for colon cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, even if total fat remains high.

Also, eating several servings of whole grains high in fiber per day, which is possible while maintaining a relatively low total carbohydrate intake, has consistently been associated with lower risks for type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.

In his last book, Atkins (16), too, had shifted considerably toward this healthier version of a low-carbohydrate diet.

One implication of the large variation in response to diet is that ... experiments with specific diets are valid for any patient. Thus, we can encourage overweight patients to experiment with various methods for weight control, including reduced-carbohydrate diets, as long as they emphasize healthy sources of fat and protein and incorporate regular physical activity. Patients should focus on finding ways to eat that they can maintain indefinitely rather than seeking diets that promote rapid weight loss. For many patients, the roll will have little role.

Nice piece with the exception of that horrible pun at the end.

It appears to me that Willett respects the Duke studies and feels they provide solid evidence that Atkins works for short term weight loss in singificantly overweight people, while still expressing some of his earlier reservations. You might argue that Willett has come closer to Atkins... but you could also argue that Atkins (in his last book) has come closer to Willett. Either way you look at it there is some convergence between the two.

I didn't rely on the PBS interview.



I do give Willett credit for slowly accepting how wrong the dietary "experts" have been (and I said so!). But that doesn't excuse him or any other scientist from not applying normal scientific rigor to the basis of what they still claim are essential dietary "truths". Yes, most sides of the public face of this debate have a financial interest to sell books or products, and the scientists involved are also trying to protect their professional standing by shifting their position so gradually that they are never in a position to have to say they were completely wrong. I understand this, and believe me I am not a supporter of what Atkins Nutritionals products are doing to the basic Atkins message. But none of that has any bearing on the underlying science of WHY low carb way of life is far superior to the low fat message still being promoted.



I'm not at all surprised some of the scientists quoted now want to backtrack from what they said - after all they would still perceive such honesty as professional suicide. Never mind in a year or two they will be boasting that these statements put them ahead of the game! But don't "impugn his motives", tell us where the story he wrote about the low fat deception is so wrong.

Cheers,

Malcolm

Glycemix index for Cheerios = 83. Glycemic index for Rice Krispies = 83. Glycemic index for Cocoa Puffs = 77. Ouch.

Just a note from personal experience. The morning that I was diagnosed with diabetes, I went to the doctor for an unrelated problem and had eaten breakfast prior to going for my appointment where they did a series of blood tests, one of which was a non-fasting blood sugar. The doctor called me the next day asking me what I had eaten for breakfast that day because my non-fasting blood sugar (2 hours after eating) was 250. Care to guess what breakfast was? Yup....plain Cheerios with low fat milk (no sugar added).
When I was pregnant (already diabetic) and testing my blood sugar following the standard ADA diet, nothing yanked my blood sugar up faster or higher than Cheerios or Wheaties with skim milk. Needless to say, I figured out pretty quickly those weren't good things for me to be eating.

Westerner,

I suggest you read through this thread: -

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...michael+fumento

It contains Taubes' rebuttal to those claims and makes for very interesting reading.

Glad you found it



Sure, by the way where are the long term trials of low fat high carb diets?



We assume he has read the books promoting reduced carb diets (Atkins, Protein Power etc) - without wishing to "impugn his motives" - where do ANY of them advocate "unlimited servings of beef, sausage, and butter" ?




Fish, nuts, poultry and some legumes are recommended in any reduced carb regime - he missed that bit too?



Where is the evidence for this? I suggest you add Dr Bernstein to your reading list who IS an expert in diabetes (and the associated health problems including CHD).



He read the book?



You see? He does support low carb! I "emphasize healthy sources of fat and protein and incorporate regular physical activity" - because all the low carb books tell me this is the way to weight loss and good health (and they explain why).

"Patients should focus on finding ways to eat that they can maintain indefinitely rather than seeking diets that promote rapid weight loss."

- I couldn't agree more which is also a good reason to say goodbye to low fat fad diets.


Cheers,

Malcolm