Atkins – the right strategy for the wrong reasons?

'Atkins is best diet around, says Stanford University.' Apparently, though I am sure that many scientists looking at the study in any sort of detail might wonder how Stanford's nutritionists have managed to reach this conclusion.

A few years ago, when the Atkins craze was at its height, a number of studies commissioned to test out some of the more popular diets in something resembling a scientific study. Given that studies have to be designed, human guinea pigs need to be recruited, the study performed over as long a period as funding will allow and the results have to be collected and analysed…not to mention the peer review process, it roughly about now that some of those papers should be appearing. And…bingo! Stanford has come out in favour of Dr. Atkins.

This study, led by Christopher Gardner and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), randomly assigned a total of 311 overweight, prenopausal women to one of four weight loss diets for twelve months: the Atkins diet (very low carbohydrate), the Zone diet (40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat), the LEARN diet (high carb, low fat) or the Ornish diet (very high carb, very low fat). All subjects managed to lose weight, but on average, those following the Atkins diet lost twice as much weight as the subjects on any of the other diets. Although the group reported that a number of blood parameters were also improved in the Atkins subjects, worryingly a deficiency in various vitamins and minerals were not central to the discussion.

You can read the abstract of this paper at the Journal of the American Medical Association, or see Christopher Gardner discussing his research on Stanford University Medical School's own site.

Obvious questions about the long term health benefits or otherwise of any diet arise, but one question that does pop into my head as a nutritionist (non-practising, admittedly), rather than a medical scientist is this:

Aren't these effects more attributable to the relatively high proportion of the energy content being present in the form of protein, rather than their lack of carbohydrates?

I have elaborated on this somewhat in a report based around the work of Margriet Westerterp-Plantenga at the University in Maastricht in the Netherlands. You can find this in the In Brief and In Depth section of nutritionandfoodsciences.org.

Comments

[Gary (the weight loss guru) Holdon]

i agree with you ;
atkins and the others ;concentrate on weight loss only ;and they left every thing ;they forget that the body is a suplementary system ;if you manage with one device ;you may destroy another;this is a fact ;you can't treat with your body partially .