So much for the “low-carb” craze. 
Good. Robert Atkins was the worst thing to ever happen to health and nutrition. Intentionally or not, he basically had people believing that they could lose weight by eating nothing but steaks and hamburgers.
Adam
no Atkins was not the worst thing to happen to nutrition. The worst thing to happen was teh typical idiot NOT reading the freaking book. In his book he wants you to do things a specific way, which ultimately ends up with under 100 grams of carbs a day of whole grains, real vegetables, fruits and legumes. FWIW, in general there is nothing particularly nutritive in potatos, rice, pasta and white bread. It is in all the bits that people leave out, the grain hulls, potato skins, and whole grains complete with husns and germ.
Face it, most all americans don’t want to hear that they need to eat quality foods, do moderate exercise, avoid excesses of alcohol and caffein [and other drug-like all natural compounds] and more or less ‘earn’ the weight loss. They want a magical food combination that lets them go blundering along like normal, couch potatoing, eating crap to excess and maybe a magic pill and lose weight.
Those people are the ones that figure they can have half a pound of bacon, 4 eggs over easy for breakfast, an in and out carnivore for lunch, and a 24 oz steak for dinner… They don’t want to hear the recommended meals that Atkins actually recommends…
induction phase, the 2 weeks when you start:
Breakfast:
Southwestern omelet with tomato, avocado and ham
Lunch:
Caesar salad with grilled chicken
Dinner:
Steak au Poivre
Roasted Asparagus
Mixed green salad with lemon vinaigrette
Gelatin dessert made with sucralose
ongoing phase:
Breakfast:
Two poached eggs over Fried Green Tomatoes
Two strips of nitrate-free bacon
Lunch:
Grilled turkey burger with pepper-jack cheese and green salsa
Creamy Red Cabbage Slaw
Dinner:
Cajun Pork Chops
Sauteed Kale with Red-Pepper Dressing
Spicy Country Atkins “Cornbread”
maintenance[when you have lost all the weight and are staying at one weight]:
Breakfast:
Two slices cranberry-orange loaf
Ricotta-cheese omelet
Lunch:
Vegetable soup
Crab salad over mixed greens
Dinner:
Herb Roasted Chicken with Lemon
Wild rice with mushrooms
Bibb lettuce and watercress salad with French dressing
Molten chocolate cakes
menus thanks to atkins.com
Now those don’t look to me like steak 3 times a day. WHere Atkins is having the trouble is in the decision to put out a line of foods for people to buy…I would guess in the hope that people would actually buy the food and follow the diet instead of winging off onto some bizarre tangent of steak 3 times a day. ME? I love to cook so I would rather get a good cookbook instead of spending money on someone else cooking for me=)
Yep, people kinda took Atkins the wrong way. While it’s true, initially, you could eat steak three times a day, and as long as few carbs are invlolved, you’ll lose weight. But your body gets used to the low carbs and then you have to do it the old fashioned way: limit portions and excercise.
There are other more sensible approaches to the low-carb diet. There’s Protein Power and The South Beach Diet, for example.
The truth of the matter is that many of us eat way too many carbs, and the ones we eat are the bad ones…refined sugar and too many sweets in general; oversized portions of potatoes, rice and pasta.
I think the upside of low carb diet is that in order to have some variety in your diet, you have to eat more vegetables.
I was delighted to see the official death knell of the “low carb” craze. For one thing, I hate the word “carb.” The word is “carboyhdrate.” The stupidity of the craze, for me, was symbolized by its inability to manage polysyllabic words. Whether the diet was effective, when practiced as Atkins intended, I don’t care. It was still stupid to see “nake” burritos sold as health food, as if the meat and sour cream are fine and its the tortilla that makes you fat.
The low-carb craze isn’t over, not by a long shot. It seems more popular and mainstream than ever, but the Atkins Diet in particular, as interpreted by most people, was unhealthy and not good for long-term use. These days, the Zone and South Beach Diets seem to be a lot more popular, they offer more options than Atkins, and they are a lot better for ongoing healthy lifestyles.
The fact that the Atkins company is filing for bankruptcy does not necessarily nean it’s going out of business, nor does it mean the diet is “over” or lacks validity.
I lost weight and keep it off thanks to Atkins. The diet can be as healthful as you make it. You can eat all the non-starchy vegetables your heart desires, and that’s a good thing, no? And you don’t have to stuff yourself with fat-laden red meat until your heart explodes. The diet advocates lots of chicken and fish, and there are plenty of healthful substitutes for other things: veggie burgers, turkey bacon/sausage, cholesterol-free eggs, etc.
As a low carber- I think the problem with the company is that, especially after Dr. Atkins death, is that it concentrated way to much on replacing high carb foods with alternatives. Of all the low carb products, the Atkins products were the most expensive and in many cases the least tasty (and sometimes gastronomically challenging as well!) I think they would have been better off, maybe not raking in huge profits initially, continuing to build on Dr. Atkins’ Plan. Products like the Atkins for Life book were far more valuable to me than the low-carb candy bars (the whole point of low carbing is that you lose craving for those things!!).
Right now I’m in low carb limbo- need to get back on the wagon- but Thai food has been calling to me too often :)…