The Never-Ending Diet Wars

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.

From Bass Player Keith Hall, Elkin, NC, http://bestfreediet.blogspot.com/
I have been on the Fletcherism diet for a little over 3 months and have lost 37 pounds. I chew eat bite 32 times and eat Lunch and supper only and have a mid afternoon snack about 3 pm and another one at 8:30 at night. Be sure to chew eat bite at least 32 times. You will eat about 20-30 minutes and feel totally full and are eating a lot less calories by eating less food and you feel totally satisfied. Read Horace Fletcher???s book in Google books called How I Became Young at Sixty.

Keith Hall, Elkin, NC, http://bestfreediet.blogspot.com
I have been on the Fletcherism diet for a little over 3 months and have lost 37 pounds. I chew eat bite 32 times and eat Lunch and supper only and have a mid afternoon snack about 3 pm and another one at 8:30 at night. Be sure to chew eat bite at least 32 times. You will eat about 20-30 minutes and feel totally full and are eating a lot less calories by eating less food and you feel totally satisfied. Read Horace Fletcher???s book in Google books called How I Became Young at Sixty.

One reason I am so impressed with Mayor Bloomberg is his action against trans fats. Food abuse kills!
Sterling Greenwood
Aspen Free Press

Perhaps next time Newsweek will hire a writer who doesn't have a vested interest in selling his own diet books!

Maybe Dean you could help. We would love to see some of the low carb research done by the scientists who have been working on it for years funded by the NIH. Can you help make that happen, Dean?

I believe he's trying to say that low fat is healthier for you than low carb. Not that it will make you lose more weight. And, while Dr. Atkins has his points about how a low carb diet will work better for you to lose weight, you still need carbs for energy, and carbs are essential in releasing seratonin, which makes people happy. And, if i recall correctly, Dr. Atkins died of heart disease. So, he may have been skinny, but he was far from healthy. So, if you want to be skinny and miserable, than by all means go for the low carb diet.
And, yes if you starve yourself, your body will in fact hold onto all the calories and fat as it possibly can, but I doubt the subjects in the low fat diet were starving themselves.
Another point jacqmark1, at the end, he's saying that an optimal diet would be both low carb and low fat, but maybe you didn't read that part.

Waaa,waaa,waaa. Quit your crying Ornish and buck up to the fact that for most people a low carb diet will work better than low fat. The arguments Dr. Atkins made in his books in favor of a low carb lifestyle always seemed to make sense. Now the ongoing research is proving him correct and it's a shame he is not here to relish it.

Other studies have shown some foods cause the body to use more calories to digest than others, like onions. So to state that something is "physiologically impossible" is ignorant or biased.

"For example, the investigators reported that those on the "low-fat" diet consumed 200 fewer calories per day???or 10,000 fewer calories per year???than those on the Mediterranean diet, yet people lost more weight on the Mediterranean diet. That's physiologically impossible." No, it's not. Changes in metabolism can bring them about, such as the starvation effect. It's possible that a style of diet could have this effect. This is simply wrong.

C'mon, Newsweek, let us hear from someone who has no skin in the game. This is the low-fat guru of America trying to save his personal reputation, for crying out loud, and it is a biased display...

I guess there will never be enough evidence for those who have backed the low fat diet to believe that Dr. Adkins could possibly have been right. But guess what - he was.

Actually, it seems that the attitude of Dr. Ornish is what's flawed here. If there is a bias towards Atkins, that's fine but the study from what I read on MSNBC.com was actually done on SEVERAL low carb diets. Also, to say that something is "physiologically impossible," when in fact studies done by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Atkins and other testing groups have shown that fat burning is substantially higher on a low-carb diet.

The bottom line: if you're like most people who have tried low fat and it hasn't worked... try low carb, moderate fat and high protein and spread your meals out over the course of the day (or just try the traditional "3 meals a day" ). If it doesn't work for you, at least YOU'LL know the truth. If it DOES, write the AMA, NIH and especially these doctors who are stuck in this low-fat mindset and let them know it. Most importantly, tell YOUR doctor AFTER you're successful, so he or she starts bugging his fellow doctors and the rest of the medical establishment.