Oh, that’s OK then. No cites required.
I acknowledge what you’re saying, but i think it’s absurd. If you’re going to blame the ADA for the rise in obesity in the last 30 years, even though the obesity occurs in people who don’t follow the ADA guidelines, then I’m going to blame Atkins for the rise in obesity in the last 30 years, even though the obesity occurs in people who don’t follow Atkins’ guidelines. It’s a ridiculous way to assign responsibility.
And if people are not willing to follow the Atkins’ guidelines but they ARE willing to follow the ADA guidelines, and either approach will take the weight off, then the ADA approach is more effective.
See what I mean?
As I said before, if people are unwilling to follow the ADA guidelines but are willing to follow the Atkins guidelines, all that shows is that Atkins is superior to a jun-food diet. Everyone admits that. It still is likely to be inferior to a varied, low-fat diet emphasizing whole foods.
Daniel
PS I remember hearing once that Eskimos have the highest rate of colon cancer of any people on earth. I’ll see if I can find a cite.
If true, that’s probably down to lack of fiber in their diet. Atkins recommends fiber supplements.
Okay, I can’t find what I was remembering re: Eskimos and colon cancer. I did find a reference stating that Aleuts, a Native Alaskan people, have phenomenally high rates of colon cancer:
Granted, this is from an AOL page, but it reflects information you’ll find on NIH pages – this is simply the best summary I’ve been able to find of this information.
Daniel
Why don’t you stop being pissy? I haven’t memorized the book, and I’m not looking it up to satisfy your indignant hissy fit.
You want to contribute, then contribute.
Have a look at the enormous number of [url=http://atkinscenter.com/science/researchsummaries/index.html]independent studies* cited on Atkin’s homepage. Granted, they’re almost certainly selective, but no more so than any of the other research posted here.
Oh bugger. Corrected link.
jjimm:
Yeah I’ve been there.
This is germaine:
http://atkinscenter.com/Archive/2002/1/11-846989.html
It backs up what I’ve been saying about calorie reduction in the initial phase.
It sounds to me like you’re just ranting. Why didn’t you make this a Pit thread in the first place? 
I haven’t memorized the book either, but I did comprehend it. And without opening it, I can tell you that Dr. Atkins does not write research papers because he is a practicing physician with a case load that requires two-thirds of his day. He dedicates himself to his practice because he cares about his patients.
And before you protest that he found time to write his book, you should know that his book, though bearing his name, was written primarily by his staff, including Micahel Bernstein, Olivia Bell Buehl, and most of all, Bill Fryer. Other contributers were a variety of nutritionists and medical specialists.
**
Why don’t you take a valium, and mind your own business?
And I can tell you that this is total bullshit, irresponsible, and a lie.
If you care about your patients you don’t arbitrarily put them on potentially harmful dietary regimes of questionable efficacy until you have scientifically proven that it is safe and effective.
You do the research first, then you prescribe to patients.
Atkins did the opposite. He came up with some interesting ideas and put people on the diet without using scientific controls to judge the efficacy and the safety.
He’s making his assertions and leaving it to everybody else to prove or disprove it. That’s not the way it works.
You prove your claim before making it.
Only a shyster and a fraud would place patients on a regimen based on unproven claims.
More total bullshit. You should have enough intelligence to know that if he had somebody write a book he could just as easily have somebody else conduct a study and publish a paper.
The question is simply one of priorities. Atkins makes money from his books. A research paper might produce unfavorable results, and wouldn’t make him money, so why take the chance?
As my quackwatch cite says: following up with the 60,000 patients he treated at his centers with a simple questionaire wouldn’t take that much effort, and would provide enormous value.
That Atkins makes excuses not to do it is a telling fact.
Also, if he cared about patients, as you say, you would think that a reasonable minimum standard of care would have him following up to actual see if they achieved the desired results.
You would think that there would be valuable data to be gained that would benefit present patients, and help him refine his technique.
He doesn’t because he’s a dangerous fraud, a shyster. He sells pseudoscience and big promises to hopeful people who really deserve a lot better.
I’m not blaming the ADA for the rise in obesity at all. I’m saying that the ADA’s approach to presenting guidelines for weight loss are not meeting with spectacular success. Even the Mayo Clinic has suggested a food pyramid that is different than the standard food pyramid.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/findinformation/conditioncenters/invoke.cfm?objectid=357FAABB-312F-414A-A8D6401C15EE66B4
Personally, I think Mayo’s Healthy Weight Pyramid might be the ideal “weight loss” guideline, if people follow it. I’m still unconvinced that the low carb diets have such negative consequences that they should be avoided, however.
We may be talking past one another. If you’re including people who don’t follow the ADA’s guidelines in your evaluation of their success, then I have to say that the Atkins diet is unsuccessful, too, because I’m including people that don’t follow the Atkins diet in my evaluation of its success.
That said, the Mayo clinic’s guidelines look good to me at first glance.
Daniel
Scylla wrote:
Um, you might want to take your own advice about that valium. 
Actually, it isn’t a lie. He really is a practicing physician. And he actually based his diet on pre-existing research. Then, he began his own research, using only those patients who consented. Merely because he doesn’t write research papers doesn’t mean he doesn’t do research.
Really, it isn’t bullshit. He has done exactly what your demanding, but you have said that anyone who researches on his funding, like Duke University, is biased.
But if he doesn’t publish, how are we to know that his research isn’t flawed? That’s the whole point of peer review.
Lib:
He has? My apologies then. Please point me to the study concerning the ongoing efficacy, and results of the 60,000 people he’s treated in his centers.
I said no such thing. Stop lying.
Hate to hijack this thread, but Daniel, I feel sorry for your muscles. I really hope you are not an active person.
According to the ACSM, here, on Page 4:
And for those a bit more active, i.e athletes it goes on to suggest the usual 1.2 to 1.8 grams per kilo a day, which is supposed to still equal about 12-15%. They do not suggest the 2.0+ grams of protien per kilo of bodyweight that many suppliment providers “suggest”.
I would think the American College of Sports Medicine is a pretty reliable source.
So is the United Nations University, I think; they say:
At any rate, most vegetable sources contain as much protein as humans need. Especially if you eat legumes and nuts regularly, you shouldn’t have to worry.
(and since I eat eggs and dairy products, I’m in no danger. Thanks for your concern, though!)
Daniel
Geez, what a thread. Let’s all calm down and have a nice, friendly religious debate on the evils of Islam instead.
**
Scylla, what were the details of this study? If the control group was on a similarly calorie-restricted diet, it would be interesting. If the control group wasn’t on any diet at all, all it says is that people on diets have less energy than people who aren’t on diets.
Now I’m a firm agnostic in this area. However, I do notice a couple of things. First, it seems to me like the warning against high fat intake is elliding several different things. AFAIK, the best predictor of heart disease is high cholesterol, not fat intake. Now, it’s true that high fat intake, obesity and high cholesterol are linked. BUT, if there is a way to have a high fat intake along with a low blood cholesterol level, I’m not certain that the parade of horribles usually associated with a high-fat diet necessarily follows.
One thing is clear: nobody really knows what the answers are. For example, we just learned that “yo-yo” dieting doesn’t appear to cause long-term health problems. Given that obesity has been a serious problem for at least forty years, it’s surprising that it has taken this long to do the research. Something similar seems to be true for the high protien, low carbohydrate approach to dieting. To quote the recent summary of the new research in USA Today,
To me it seems too early to say, definitively, which diets work better and what the long term health risks are.
The Adkins diets, and other copycat diets, are based on the premise that ancient man’s diet was mostly meat, with little plant sources. I.e., this is the diet that our bodies were brought up on on an evolutionary scale.
I can’t believe this. Of course, no one knows what our ancestors’ diet was like exactly, but this belief is contested by many scientists today. What makes much more common sense is that ancient man ate mostly plant sources with some meat thrown in when he/she could get it. It takes a lot of energy to catch an animal, unlike a plant. Plants were much more readily available. I’m not sure exactly how Adkins came up with this strange idea, but it falls in the face of common sense and other experts in the field.
Please cite some of these experts, and explain why common sense should overrule scientific evidence.
According to the best evidence available (see the many articles here), early man ate a lot of meat. In particular, see this article.
Also, keep in mind that while an animal may be hard to catch, plants are much more likely to be poisonous.