Loading ...Slings and Arrows
A new crack team has been assembled to battle the evil Atkins empire, the low-carb movement that has taken the world by storm in 2004 and, according to this group, threatens to make us all invalids after maybe just a couple of years on the horribly dangerous diet. How odd that I feel better than ever after almost four years and I know others who are going strong after many more than that. We must, I suppose, be genetic anomalies, nay, “mutants.” Yeah, that’s it! I’m Wolverine, damn it! My arteries, heart, liver, and kidneys somehow just keep healing themselves despite the constant onslaught of deadly fat and protein!
What’s amazing to me is that most of their claims are unsubstantiated myth without any foundation, or extremely theoretical foundations. I really thought that we were beyond these “vampire myths” but I guess not. As utterly tired of them as I am, though, in a way I think this may be more helpful than hurtful. Sure some uninformed people may get all alarmed, but these people – if they are currently on a low-carb – are doing it without really knowing why, and perhaps not even doing it in the best way, so chances are they have two strikes against them anyway. Moreover, I think it will get the Atkins folks and others to come back with very specific rebuttals to each of their points. Atkins’ current response seems to be a very quick and dirty general refutation of their claims. Maybe, like myself, they are just tired of dealing with ridiculous stuff like this. It takes a bit of time to find the studies that that supposedly show linkages, but half this stuff isn’t even backed up by studies, it’s just conjecture, so you have to write your own analysis as to why the conjecture isn’t accurate and isn’t supported by any data. I’m hoping they come out with something more detailed tomorrow.
So, who is behind this exactly? It’s not precisely clear. Of course, 11 non-profits are listed on the site, but despite the fact that non-profits legally have to reveal who they get funding from, there is no mention of their funders on the website - at least not on this first day of their initial press release. What are they trying to hide? In fact, it seems that Weight Watchers and so-called “consumer groups” helped fund this effort. I immediately thought this also must be one of PCRM’s (the radical vegan group that has been attacking Atkins for years because they advocate eating animal products, oh my!) dirty tricks, however so far it looks like they aren’t a part of it. Instead, Weight Watchers, is apparently one of the funders, and they have been struggling recently and have blamed mainly the low-carb movement on their financial woes. My guess is that other than Weight Watchers, the funders are food companies or segments of the food industry (the potato and orange juice industries are two that have recently tried combating the low-carb movement on their own) and really anyone whose business is threatened by low-carb. This even includes some medical groups. After all, without patients, you’re out of business, right? Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but whereas most individual doctors want to give their patients the best possible treatment, their hands are tied by larger associations that lay down the law as to what is considered the party line, and also the highly litigious atmosphere in which they work promotes extreme conservatism in approach. Then you have the non-MD “experts” - the dietiticians and nutritionists – who have been recommending the same low-fat approach for twenty plus years who are being rejected in favor of a more popular approach. I’m actually shocked that the American Dietetic Association isn’t a big part of this! I am really looking forward to some further investigatory work of exactly where the funding is coming from, and I’m betting we will see something really enlightening once it’s revealed.
Let me supplement this by saying what most of us know already. You can indeed do (and many people have done) any diet or eating plan in a non-optimal way. Low-fat dieters can eat lots of lean protein, fruits and veggies, or they can eat a tremendous amount of low-fat cookies instead. Low-carbers can eat a nice array of whole foods - meats, fish, cheese, nuts, veggies, and fruits, but they can also eat only fast-food hamburgers fried in trans fats with highly processed cheese but without the bun, low-carb candy, and low-carb ice cream. If these groups truly wanted to educate people about how they could eat better, instead of using the same old myths and scare tactics, they could have taken the high road and suggested a whole-foods, optimal approach to low-carb eating, such as one advocated in Protein Power. This group says that people are eating fewer fruits and veggies because they think they are not part of a low-carb plan. If so, why not simply educate those people that they can and should get pleanty of high-fiber/low-carb fruits and veggies even on a carb-restricted diet? Because this group has not been formed to educate, it’s been formed in hopes that they can scare a lot of people away from low-carb entirely, and back into carb-centric diet. They have a vendetta against Atkins because his company, and others that have been part of the low-carb movement, have made a lot of money, whereas the Krispy Cremes, the pasta makers, bakeries, juice producers, and anyone else whose product or service is antithetical to low-carb is now losing money. It’s so transparent it’s laughable, if it weren’t also so sad.