The Never-Ending Diet Wars

I thought two of Dr. Ornish's observations were very important: (a) subjects supposedly on the Atkins diet weren't really on that diet (they didn't eat loads of bacon, streaks, etc.), and (b) subjects supposedly on the low-fat diet weren't really on a low-fat diet! Nonetheless, my experience indicates that carbs -- even "good carbs" ??? are important. I have been a vegan 22 years. Even so, my cholesterol, although good, was never great, and by triglycerides tended to be high. In the past year I have limited (NOT eliminated) the intake of carbs and expanded my consumption of nuts (esp. almonds). So my fat intake (and, I think, calories) has likely increased. Yet I lost 14 pounds (and now am close to my ideal weight). More importantly, my TRI are now in the 70s, FAR lower than they have ever been. My HDL has gone up while my total C and LDL have gone down.

The human species evolved over millions of years. Civilizations arose only in the last 12000 years, largely as a result of the development of both grains (and grain-based products) and domesticated animals. It seems to me the best diet is therefore most likely the diet that most closely matches the diet our bodies evolved around. The disconnect between what humans ate in 10000 BC and now IS the problem. Today we eat much more food, get far less exercise, and the food we eat today differs substantially from that consumed over the millenia. The debate between one diet and another appears foolhardy when a baseline hasn't been established. Until we know what "healthy" is, we will never truly know what is unhealthy. Swapping one unhealthy diet for another marginally "better" than the last does not seem to get us very far. And, given what I have just said, can we even legitimately promote a single diet that is "universally" beneficial?

"When you eat less fat, you consume fewer calories without having to eat less food, because the food is less dense in calories, as well as low in refined carbohydrates."

The last segment of that sentence does not follow. Just by eating less fat does not mean you eat less refined carbohydrates. Fat by definition has no carbohydrates. By contrast, eating less fat means you must eat more carbohydrates, which means a higher likelihood of including refined carbs in your diet. the author of this article fails to mention that eating more fat causes a person to feel more satiated and the effect of that is to automatically consume less calories over time. I know this to be true in my own experience. I think the one thing the diet warriors ALL agree on, as evidenced by this article, is that refined carbohydrates are the reason Americans are so fat and are experiencing so many problems with so many diseases. Before the 20th century, human beings were not eating refined carbs at anywhere near the level we are today. It is the single cheapest most easily accessible food source available to us today. There is no healthy diet that includes refined carbs as a main component. Unfortunately, it remains the chief component of the American diet and the American mentality about food. This is what needs to change. We do that and all these extreme forms of diet -- low-fat, low carb etc. -- will no longer be necessary or relevant.

"When you eat less fat, you consume fewer calories without having to eat less food, because the food is less dense in calories, as well as low in refined carbohydrates."

The last segment of that sentence does not follow. Just by eating less fat does not mean you eat less refined carbohydrates. Fat by definition has no carbohydrates. By contrast, eating less fat means you must eat more carbohydrates, which means a higher likelihood of including refined carbs in your diet. the author of this article fails to mention that eating more fat causes a person to feel more satiated and the effect of that is to automatically consume less calories over time. I know this to be true in my own experience. I think the one thing the diet warriors ALL agree on, as evidenced by this article, is that refined carbohydrates are the reason Americans are so fat and are experiencing so many problems with so many diseases. Before the 20th century, human beings were not eating refined carbs at anywhere near the level we are today. It is the single cheapest most easily accessible food source available to us today. There is no healthy diet that includes refined carbs as a main component. Unfortunately, it remains the chief component of the American diet and the American mentality about food. This is what needs to change. We do that and all these extreme forms of diet -- low-fat, low carb etc. -- will no longer be necessary or relevant.

Heart doctors talked my mother into heart valve surgery and then put her on a severely resitricted fat diet. She was taking a pharmacy full of meds every day and in spite of her exercising and following that damn fat restricted diet, she had a seres of mini-strokes that caused stroke induced dementia. She died two years later - her mind gone. Her sisters are still alive and are in their mid-eighties.
I have a lot of skeptism over any cardiologist's suggestions regarding fat reduction. Atkins did not say it was all right to eat a lot of fatty meats and butter and other dairy food. In fact he suggested eating eating lean meats and two green vegetables with every meal. Dairy was forbidden on his diet. Most people think they know what the Atkins was about and this author is no exception. Before you commit to anything, to lower your saturated fat intake, reduce carbohydrates to no more than 60 grams if you;re sedentary and 80 grams if you are active Ten less of each if you are female. Limit dairy and white breads and flour tortillas and by all means drink at least six ounces of pomegranate juice and take one aspirin and high dose capsule of niacin a day. These three supplements will actually strip new plague from your arteries. They will do nothing for older plaques that have been anchored by growths in your arteries called atheromas. That;s where the term atherosclerosis comes from. Hopefully in time medical science will discover some compound that will shrink or cause athereromas to disappear so that pomegranate and aspirin and niacin can strip the old plaque also. .In the meantime you have to eliminate caramel intake that is the basis for arterial goo and take lots of anti-oxidants and simply eat better. .

to ksfc, why do you claim he had a stroke? At the time of death he was bloated from the condition he had brought on by the blow to the head. There were televised videos of him a very few weeks before he died, I think it was two weeks, that show he was not significantly overweight. Also I think you mean like WJC, HRC, the UN, and NATO were right about WMD n Iraq.

Dean Ornish, your own research has had serious flaws. Atkins was a genius and he was right, and eventually it will be proven beyond all doubt.

How's losing 150 pounds in two years on the Atkins Diet sound Doc? And yes I ate tons of Eggs AND Red Meat. Averaging 18 Eggs per week. Being from the South (Louisiana) my diet also included 3-5 servings per week of Hog Cracklins-that's fried out pork fat with the attached skin. My total cholestorol droped from 230 to 186. One other thing - I took in many more calories than I burned off. Approx. 2500 per day caloric intake.

Television broadcasters are responding to Tim Russerts??? death by claiming we should eat more meat! Clearly they are protecting their advertising dollars. Bring Tim back and see if he would choose meat over a plant based diet.

Where in nature did our ancestors seek or need "protein powder"? Most of the nutritional misinformation broadcast continuously is for the profit of big business, including broadcasters and advertisers, never is it about the well being of consumers. Without all the commercial hype we will all still eat...except the meat and dairy industries won't adversely affect the health of Americans. Anecdotally speaking "working out" will grow muscles and strength bigger and faster without all the artificial protein powders, which incidentally are peddled by muscle magazines for additional profits.

Television broadcasters are responding to Tim Russerts??? death by claiming we should eat more meat! Clearly they are protecting their advertising dollars. Bring Tim back and see if he would choose meat over a plant based diet.

Where in nature did our ancestors seek or need "protein powder"? Most of the nutritional misinformation broadcast continuously is for the profit of big business, including broadcasters and advertisers, never is it about the well being of consumers. Without all the commercial hype we will all still eat...except the meat and dairy industries won't adversely affect the health of Americans. Anecdotally speaking "working out" will grow muscles and strength bigger and faster without all the artificial protein powders, which incidentally are peddled by muscle magazines for additional profits.

Re: Robert Atkins' cardiovascular status: despite a statement in 2002 (the year before Atkins' death) by his personal physician that ???clearly, his own nutritional protocols have left him, at the age of 71, with an extraordinarily healthy cardiovascular system,??? his widow released a statement in 2004 saying that Atkins ???did have some progression of his coronary artery disease in the last three years of his life including some new blockage of a secondary artery that was remedied during this admission???.???. Also in 2004, New York magazine quoted Patrick Fratellone, Atkins' cardiologist and employee, as saying that his coronary arteries had been perhaps 30 to 40% blocked in 2001.

I'm struck by how seldom discussions such as this mention the China Study, referred to by the New York Times as "the Rolls-Royce of epidemiology." There is a book about it (and related matters) by the co-lead investigator, T. Colin Campbell. He's an emeritus professor of nutrition at Cornell, and has conducted something like 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research. He basically agrees with Ornish.

Hello all....if you all want the diet wars to end it's simple. Just read the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes (2007). You all will be absolutely schocked by the wrong information we have been given for the last 50 years by incompetent , biased , so-called "nutrition/obesity experts". This Ornish guy is wrong!, read the book!. The insight you will gain into obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, exercise, fibre, and the "calorie is a calorie" myth, will astound you. You will never have to "diet" again!!, just eat the RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS!!! You will learn that low fat is wrong!!!, and ATKINS (and a precious few others) WERE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAD IT RIGHT!!!! EVERYONE, get off your diets!, and read the book, I DARE YOU!!

fifi8989, below, does not remember correctly. Atkins did not in fact die of a heart attack. In fact, an examining doctor commented on the good state of Atkins heart, from a cardiovascular standpoint. Actually Atkins died of a blow to the head. It was in all the papers. This is not a matter of controversy. I don't think fifi8989 is exactly right about the body needing carbs for energy. The body can burn other things, like fat and protein. fifi8989 is right that some carbs will help seratonin. Dr Schwarzbein emphasizes this, and recommend a low-carb level that is higher than the induction phase of Atkins, but which is roughtly the same as the "maintenance" phase of Atkins, and they are both much lower carb levels than is usual for low-fat diets.

Truth is, Dr Atkins did NOT die of heart disease, he died as the result of a slip and fall on an icy sidewalk. Ornish prattles on and on obviously touting "his" diet and in doing so, flies in the face of MANY studies done over the years and most NOT funded by the Atkins group. The Atkins diet is NOT a zero carb diet except or the inception stages to switch you body's preference from Carbs to burning accumulated body fat which is the reason for monitoring the ketones excreted. Once your body is burning body fat ( and YES that is an energy source why do you think your body stores it as fat ?) you can gradually add back carbs unil you achieve a balance where no carbs are stored as fat. GO read Atkins Diet Revolution book and learn.

Ornish says: ???...those on the ???low-fat??? diet consumed 200 fewer calories per day...than thos on the Mediteranean diet, yet people lost more weight on the Mediterranean diet. That???s physiologically impossible.??? He???s got to be kidding! No one who could say this should have any credibility in the diet debates. Yes, it is a law of physics, not merely a law of nutrition, that if you burn more calories than you take in then you will lose weight. But it absolutely does not follow that if you increase your calorie intake, or take in more calories than you butn that you will gain weight, EVEN if you guarantee constant rates of metabolism. One reason for this is simply a matter of logic: the truth of ???A implies B??? does not imply the truth of ???not A implies not B???. That observation is sufficient to discredit Ornish???s claim. But further, the ???type??? of calorie matters: Yes, conceptually ???a calorie is a calorie??? (as ???low-fat??? proponents like to chant) as a physical unit of energy, but protein that ???has 100 calories??? is handled entirely differently by the body, has different effects on the hormonal system, insulin, etc., than 100-calories-worth of white bread. (I???m not saying that Ornish promotes white bread.) The 100-calories of protein may not (and probably won???t, on a healthy, non-calorie-restricted diet) even be used much at all as fuel, but will likely be used as building material for the body instead, while the bread will tend to be used as fuel, or will be stored as fat in the context of a high-refined-carb meal or diet. Also, it is a pretty well established nutiritional principle that the body can respond to calorie restriction in a defensive way by reducing metabolism. What Ornish claims is ???physiologically impossible??? is certainly not impossible, nor is it even unlikely, and he should be embarassed to have made the claim. Regarding some of his other comments, there is nothing uncharacteristic about an Atkins diet that is high in good, low-starch vegetables and fruits. A typical breakfast for this Atkins dieter is two eggs, half an avocado, a small peach, and a few blueberries. Yes, Atkins recognizes that meat and eggs and butter are good foods, but Atkins dieters don???t gorge themselves on these things. Frank Hummer, Ph.D., mathematics.