Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Is the owner of Atkins Nutritionals undoing 30 years of progress forged by the outspoken doctor has tried to make in the popular mindset of what is and what isn’t healthy to eat?

For those who haven’t heard yet, a big mess has just blown up in the world of low-carb dieting. Collette Heimowitz, the director of research and education for Atkins Nutritionals, put her foot in her mouth by recommending no more than 20% of calories on the diet come from saturated fat. She was quoted in the Sunday New York Times article titled “Make That Steak A Bit Smaller, Atkins Advises Today’s Dieters.” The media jumped on this as Atkins finally backtracking and telling people to eat less saturated fat and fat in general.

Where did this 20% come from? Who knows! Atkins never specified any ratio in any of his books, but did recommend eating a variety of protein sources, some which had high amounts of saturated fat, some low. The reason that was given for this new concern for an actual limit on saturated fat was “we want physicians to feel comfortable with this diet, and we want people who are going to their physicians with this diet to feel comfortable.” In other words, let’s make the diet more politically correct so that we get less flack from critics.

Many long-time low-carbers (whether followers of the specific approach Atkins outlined or not) were outraged. They called it a sell-out to the mainstream. Especially considering all the information out there that actually supports saturated fat as a healthy component of the diet, with much of this posted on own Atkins’ site, the sudden caving to the majority despite 30 years of outspokenness came as a betrayal to what Atkins followers believed Atkins himself fought for for so many years.

It seems to me almost ridiculous that now that low-carb and Atkins in particular has become so enormously popular, and an incredible marketing force, that they would choose this moment to cave. If anything, this newfound influence and money should cause them to be even bolder in their proclamations!

Soon after this story ran, of course, all the critics who have been to a large extent silenced in recent months due to the incredible new popularity of the diet, suddenly have become emboldened and pounced on the apparent backtracking: A BBC article titled “Atkins Diet Boss: ‘Eat Less Fat’” now gives the impression that an entire foundation of “fat is ok” has now gone out the window. Another article on itv.com is subtitled “Followers of the controversial Atkins diet are being warned to cut back on some of the diet’s staple foods amid health fears.” Just wait until we see comments from the die-hard critics of Atkins like Dr. Dean Ornish, the PCRM, PETA, etc.

After the media took the ball and ran with it, Atkins Nutritionals has been trying to do damage control. They’ve put out a press release that claims the media got it all wrong, that there’s nothing wrong with eating red meat or saturated fat, and the Atkins plan is the same as it’s always been. The one thing this article doesn’t address, however, is the supposed comments of Collette Heimowitz. Was she a lone gun that the news media decided to either misquote or quote and then attribute her views to Atkins Nutritionals as opposed to personal recommendations? Who knows! Some conspiracy theorists go so far as to suggest critics of Atkins high up in the news media decided to fabricate the story completely.

For the record, I follow a similar eating plan to Atkins, but it has a different in certain areas. Protein Power, developed by a married couple of doctors who treated patients at a private practice for many years using this eating plan, similarly restricts carbohydrates, but emphasized eating lots of high-fiber/low-carb veggies and fruits, grass-fed, wild, or free-range animal products, and base much of their plan off a great many medical and anthropological studies and basic physiology and metabolic science. They do not contend (like A…. auth of the South Beach Diet, Sears, Willett, and most of the nutrition/medical mainstream) that eating saturated fat is bad. They, the Atkins site, and others like Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s Cholesterol Myths and the Weston A. Price Foundation have brought forth supporting evidence that suggests there is no proof of any harm from eating saturated fat or red meat. There could very well be a link when one COMBINES it with excessive highly refined carbohydrates, sugar, and the like, but when eaten as part of a diet low in these things, there is absolutely no case against it, and a lot of evidence that it is actually beneficial in a lot of way.

Whether or not this latest scuffle is the media’s fault, or Atkins Nutritionals, unfortunately, I believe there is at least a little blame shared by Dr. Atkins himself. Dr. Robert Atkins died last year and so cannot speak for himself - his books have to speak for him. He gave interviews of course, but his books are what sold millions upon millions of copies and is where his message could said to be most fully described. When I first read Doctor Atkins New Diet Revolution back in 2000, the overall impression I got was that of “hey, eat whatever your heart desires as long as it’s low in carbs.” Whether or not the book actually said this or not, as someone completely new to low-carbing at the time, that is the impression I got. Atkins went on and on about how you could eat this wonderful fatty thing or that. Unfortunately, critics picked up on this to mean that this is what the diet was all about. In other words, Atkins boldness in telling people “hey you can eat this stuff that everyone is saying is bad for you but is actually fine” came to mean to the press that it was only about eating these “forbidden” foods. Some misguided Atkins followers, for sure, only picked up on these highlights and actually did exactly that! The hype in most of the books Atkins put out perhaps up until his last, Atkins for Life, and his combative and defensive style, did not make him any friends in the medical community and simply caused this hype to be highlighted and distorted in the mainstream media.

The problem I see is not that this kind of eating is inherently unhealthy, but that within the context of our modern food sources, it is not the best choice. In other words, the diet that we evolved to eat and that many hunter-gatherer tribes still eat is one that is primarily of animal origin. There are exceptions of course, but in any case, the eating of primarily animal-based foods even to the exclusion of non-animal based ones can be perfectly healthy, as many anthropological studies have born out, but only when you take into consideration the other facets of what exactly is being eaten: first of all, the animals that are eaten are either wild or are grazing on their natural diets. They are not stuffed in pens, force-fed grains, and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. Because of this the nutritive value of their meat is much higher than what we get at the grocery. The meats and dairy have a great deal more Omega-3 as well as CLA. The other aspect is that these people eat the entire animal. Every part that is edible is consumed, and the different organs provide much of the nutrients that one could get from plant sources. Most of us in the “civilized” world only eat the muscle meat of animals and so don’t have access to these nutrients and must get them through another source. We can take vitamins, but most vitamins are not nearly as effective as eating the plants that contain them because vitamins have all kinds of cofactors that regulate their inclusion or exclusion into the body.

So, the point is that there’s nothing wrong with eating lots of meat and saturated fat, but that common sense needs to be applied so that you don’t eat this to the exclusion of everything else, including some vegetables and fruit. That is not what low-carbing is about, despite the fact that much of the media paints it as an all-meat, zero-vegetable diet. It seems that the fact that one can eat only meat and still observe the central guideline of Atkins of restriction of carbohydrates means that some of the uninformed will actually do this, but also that the media then feels that such an extreme variety of the diet is the diet itself. I guess the main lesson I can garner from this episode, if nothing else, is not to trust the media to ever get the story correct. Instead trust them to get it wrong, to distort to the truth either out of ignorance or out of the arrogant assumption that the public at large cannot handle anything more complex than X is good and Y is bad, period, end of story, and then to misreport things that will cause huge firestorms so that they will have more to write about and be able to sell more papers or more ads or commercials.