I saw a segment this morning on “Today” featuring the perky Katie Couric (in an uncharacteristic adversarial role) interviewing esteemed fad dietist Dr Robert Atkins.
One of the points that Atkins raised was there has never been a case of kidney damage from the result of a high-protein diet.
I have always accepted as truth that high-protein diets were rough on the kidneys, and the reasons (which aren’t relevant to this question) seemed plausible enough.
So, is Dr Atkins correct on this point? Is this a case like radon and the candiru catfish, where scientists say, “Yeah, we don’t have any cases. But it’s possible that it might happen, and now it’s up to you do disprove it.”
But, anyway, that’s the question: Has there ever been a case of kidney damage associated with high-protein diets.
As I understand it, this is sort of like asking if there has ever been a documented case of cigarettes causing cancer. The damage would not occur in the short term, unless the person already had kidney problems. What would be required would be a study correlating long-term high protein consumption with kidney problems.
I think it’s likely that most people don’t stay on the diets long enough to do much damage.
The Atkins diet is not ment to be so much of a fad diet, but a differant way of eating for life. Atkins has been researching this for 25 years or so, and a lot of people, him included have been on it for that long, with no ill effects.
One problem is terming the Atkins diet as a “high-protein” diet. It does not really qualify. “Low-carbohydrate” is most accurate.
Atkins doesn’t say: binge on proteins. Rather, don’t eat carbs. There is a difference.
The outcome (from experience, b/c I’ve been on the Atkins way of eating for 10+ months now): you may eat SLIGHTLY more protein, probably even more fat, and far fewer carbs.
I eat almost the same thing at meals as other people, except that I might, for instance, skip the potatoes and bread and have some extra spinach or broccoli. I don’t find myself eating four steaks instead of one. So I’m not getting a significantly higher amt. of protein than other people–and certainly far less than, say, some athletes/bodybuilders/eskimos.
I think one place from which the fear of “protein diets” stems is the liquid protein fad diets of the 50s-70s. These people had ALL protein, nothing else, and terribly poor intakes of vitamins and minerals; I believe some may have died from heart attacks stemming from severe electrolyte imbalances.