Atkins Diet: "Questionable"

Obviously, since I believe in the non-dieting lifestyle, I believe all diets are bad, but this has to be one of the dumbest & I believe most dangerous around. It is extraordinarily dangerous to live on mostly meats, on protein & fat. For one thing, there is no fiber in your diet, so you are courting colon cancer. For another, it puts an incredible strain on the kidneys, & generally has to leave you malnourished in some ways. Fad diet? Ya THINK?!!! Indeed it is, & one which has been getting recycled far too much for far too many years.

all diets are of course fad diets, but i really believe this one is a lesser evil - the article is of course wrong, Atkins diet is based on green vegetables, then meat and animal products, but still. i'm not defending it, but i know a diabetic who eats this way and now does not need meds at all, as she is now eating healthier than ever (this is someone who did Optifast and Phen Fen, WW and Jenny Craig, no wonder she developed diabetes). please don't misinterpret this as an endorsement, but it *is* a diet very high in veggies and fish etc. and yes, still a restrictive diet. the problem is the same - bring carbs back, go back to regular eating, and the weight comes back, often bringing friends along.

But that's exactly the problem with this diet and all diets, is that when you return to "normal eating" you gain the weight back. It is not normal or healthy to eat a low-carb or carb free diet to lose weight. The principal reason that diets fail is that they restrict eating. These restrictions cause problems with nourishment and often help to create food obsessions as the dieter wishes to eat "forbidden" foods. Our country is too obsessed with looking good and dieting. I'm sure the starving people in third world countries are laughing at our stupidity as they eat the one meal they might have that day. Quoda

Unfortunately, this fad diet has been around longer than most... I could go on forever with anti-Atkins rhetoric (did you know the good Dr. never wrote a peer-reviewed paper on his own diet?), but I think most people here are already well aware. :) Atkins is like the Scientology of eating.

..."But that's exactly the problem with this diet and all diets, is that when you return to "normal eating" you gain the weight back"... It's all a matter of redefining "normal eating" on a permanent basis. When I started eating paleolithically (i.e. a pre-agricultural diet), that is mostly veggies, fruits, and meat with few grains or dairy and no processed food, corn syrup, etc. I lost approximately 50 pounds without really trying. I started eating paleo not to lose weight, but because after much research and considering I decided that it made sense to eat as I evolved to eat. Losing weight was simply a side effect (I am still not skinny, by any means). I agree that dieting for weight loss is problematic and can ruin a person's metabolism. I just don't know of an effective and practical method for improving people's eating habits in our fast food society. Yes, diets generally speak of "forbidden" foods, but I think there has to be some notion out there that some so-called "foods" aren't really fit for human consumption on any kind of regular basis.

I absolutely despise Atkins! I call it the Scarlet Letter Diet (adulterated information to make people sick). Ironic that the company uses a big scarlet letter A to symbolize their diet. (lol)

I read one of Atkins' books about 30 years ago, Michelle, & he said you could have one small green salad with a bit of oil & vinegar daily, plus unlimited amounts of things like meat, eggs, bacon, butter, cream, etc. Are you sure you mean Atkins or Pritikin? I have a friend now whose father-in-law is on Atkins, & he is eating pork rinds, hot dogs, steaks, bacon, eggs, but NO fruits or vegetables of any kind. My friend's 3-year-old son asked his grandfather to drink some of the fruit smoothie his mother made him (strawberries, mangoes, pineapple, guava) & his grandfather said, "I can't. It will make me fat." My friend is just waitjng to see whether a heart attack or kidney failure comes first.

And now Atkins has put out low-carb ice cream...! I agree with Michelle that if you try to focus on the veggie-mainlining component of the Atkins diet as opposed to the meat mainlining component, it is better for you (kidneys, colon etc.) Veggies are just good period. But like we all know once the carbs make their post diet debut things can get wobby!

I have a friend who is currently doing Atkins and loves it. She's eating a lot of veggies but very little fruit because of the sugar. The way she sees it, she's eating the same amount of meats and stuff but is now required to eat vegetables (rather than pasta and rice and bread) so that's an improvement over her previous eating habits which were no veggies. One thing that is different about Atkins compared to other fad diets is that you're not supposed to go off it, ever. You won't keep losing weight forever, you'll eventually get to the weight your body "wants" to be and although you keep eating the same your loss will stop. I'm not advocating, just explaining that yes, people gain the weight back because they go off the diet, which you're not supposed to do. It's supposed to be a "new way of eating" rather than a temporary measure until the weight is lost.

Though I'm anti-dieting, I have say low-carb dieting has two things going for it: 1) it's the only diet I know of that says "eat when you're hungry, and stop when you're full and 2) it makes a whole other list of foods "illegal" than do low-fat diets, so that when people are finally ready to give up dieting, it's easier to legalize all foods if they've been on both sorts of diets. That is, nearly any food you can think of is either okay on atkins or okay on macdougal, so somewhere in the former dieter's head is the idea that yes, this food was once okay to eat, so it's okay to eat it now. Atkins could therefore provide a half-way house on the way to dieting recovery. I doubt the foods on any weight-loss diet do people as much damage as the weight loss itself. All weight loss is dangerous for human health, and until someone can show me research that says otherwise, I shall endeavor never to lose weight again.

They did a head-to-head study of Atkins vs. the traditional low-fat diet over the course of a year. The people on Atkins had lost more weight at the 3- and 6- months interval, but by the end of the 12 months, the losses for both diets were the same. There's a longer-term study of Atkins going on now. It's true, Dr. Atkins never bothered to try to justify his own diet with study data. I guess he didn't need to -- he sold enough books without it. I know one big concern many nutritionists have about the Atkins diet is his allowance of basically unlimited quantities of nitrite-laden foods like bacon, hot dogs, and sausage. LLW -- small weight losses (5-10% of total weight) have been shown to greatly improve the health and blood-sugar control of Type II diabetics. For details, see: Segal KR, Edano A, Abalos A, Albu J, Blando L, Tomas MB. Effect of exercise training on insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism in lean, obese, and diabetic men. J Appl Physiol. 1996;71:2402-11 Ross R, Dagnone D, Jones JP, Smith H, Paddags A, Hudosn R, Janssen I Reduction in obesity and related co-morbid conditions after diet-induced weight loss or exercise-induced weight loss in men. Ann Intern Med 2000:133:92-103 Williamson DF, Thompson TJ, Thun M, Flanders D, Pamuk E, Byers T. Intentional weight loss and mortality among overweight individuals with diabetes. Diabetes Care. 2000 Oct;23(10):1499-504.

...But, to wit, we won't be having pro-weight loss talk here.

Well, Paul, I was responding to LLW's comment that all weight loss was dangerous for human health. Sometimes it really isn't. That's not to say there are other, sometimes better ways to improve one's health, though.

i was kind of worried and regretful last night after i posted that comment, that i might come off as advocating the diet, which would really embarrass me. i am just prejudiced in favor of "low carb" lifestyle because i have PCOS. of course i must note that Dr. Atkins himself really rode the "being fat will kill you... and it is so *ugly*" wagon, all the way to the bank. it is still a weight loss thing, the book is a #1 best seller because people want to lose weight just like the dramatic "before and afters" on the website. (and of course, all those formerly forbidden foods are allowed again so you certainly will see Atkins' diet devotees living on steaks and cheese. i don't know how they go to the toilet either ;^). people still hope that finally they will begin to live life and do the fun things they have put off until they "lose the weight" and i hope no one thinks i am saying "yay to dieting!". i don't follow a very LC lifestyle, (is it even possible with kids? LOL!) but that is one of the recommendations for PCOS. when researching the condition i came across the revised "low carb food pyramid" as having green veggies on the bottom tier - and sugar and starch on the tip, IIRC- which i thought was pretty cool. back to topic: weight rebound - there is always a regain (+some) after going off a diet, i am sure a significant portion of us are fat from all our weight loss diets, no matter what the flavor.

The totality of "weight loss" means is what is dangerous. That some studies show its worth does not justify it as it remains an extraordinarily unlikely proposition. Saying small weight-loss is okay is akin to saying that if a person "really needs it", its okay. There may well be other things going on that are improving health which are only coincidentally related to weight loss and may be better achieved by focusing on them rather than the weight loss. But, given that weight loss is the only thing researchers ever seem to care about, they don't want to be bothered with looking at achievable health goals. Persuit of weight loss is dangerous at all times, and we need to stop weight stigmatization if we really want to achieve positive health goals. Fat baiting does no one any good.

The risks of dieting include, according to one expert: "anxiety, depression, lethargy, lowered self-esteem, decreased attention span, weakness, high blood pressure, hair loss, gall bladder disease, gall stones, heart disease, ulcers, constipation, anemia, dry skin, skin rashes, dizziness, reduced sex drive, menstrual irregularities, amenorrhea, gout, infertility, kidney stones, numbness in the legs, weight gain, eating disorders, reduced resistance to infection, lowered exercise tolerance, electrolyte imbalance, bone loss, osteoporosis, and death." I remember reading somewhere that dieters have a 700% increase in the risk of a heart defect called Left Ventricular Hypertrophy. Every diet (whatever "logical" justification we invent for it) increases these risks. Even if a 10% reduction in weight for some minority population would help ameliorate some genetic condition of theirs, dieting has only a 1% chance of achieving that weight reduction and over a 50% chance of resulting in weight gain. And as the one targeted condition improves, the list of other diet risks does not disappear. Most problems that fat people experience do not disappear with weight loss--as in the recent study that shows that fat people with knee problems have lower surgery rates than *formerly* fat people with those same problems. That is, weight loss, which most would "intuitively" assume to create less joint damage, seems to actually make the joints weaker. If fat people simply exercise three times a week, the health risks correlated with "obesity" vanish.

"If fat people simply exercise three times a week, the health risks correlated with "obesity" vanish." I believe this is true. Too bad lots of fat people believe that exercise belongs to thin people.

Very well-stated, LLW. I exercise every day, & I am healthier & fitter than most of the thin people I know. I don't follow a "plan" about eating, but I do eat quite a lot of fruits & veggies, fairly small amounts of lean meats, I eat whole grains, lots more fish than I used to, I eat quite a lot of yogurt, use canola or olive oil for cooking, drink lots of black & green teas, & I take a good multivitamin, calcium, & fish oil capsules. I eat when I am hungry, stop when I am full, & if I occasionally want a sub sandwich or some chips, I eat it. I went from a steady weight of around 155 pounds pre-dieting days to a steady weight of 175-180 since, no more dieting for this girl. Whenever I see where someone is basing his or her diet on what prehistoric people ate, one thing I always remember is that those people only lived to be about 35 years old. Somehow that doesn't sound so desirable to me. :-) As far as I can see, any number of different food combinations may result in early death or long life, & I still put a lot of stock in genetics. My mother & grandmother cooked with lard & ate pork rinds, & lived to be 85 & 90. I want nothing to do with either lard or pork rinds, so we will see how I do.

lol, patsy, about paleolithic people dying young! I hope you live til 90, and give 'em heck the whole time. For fun one day, go look at the paleolithic diet discussion board on line--never saw such a bunch of food moralists. And angry? Geesh, reading it, you gotta wonder if maybe excessive meat eating does promote aggression. ;-) Of course it's impossible to eat "paleolithic" or evolutionary food, anyway. How many people do you know who eat 10% of their calories as insects? Probably very few. Yet the best current guess says gatherer-hunters did just that. It would mean never eating fruits or those vegetables that are botanically fruits (peppers, squash, etc) except during three summer months (& maybe apples and pears into the early fall). It would mean only eating eggs during summer, cuz that's when eggs are naturally laid. (You have birds laying in your trees in January in North America, definitely let the ornithologists know.) It would mean killing squirrels and bunnies and pigeons yourself and eating everything--the brain, the bones, the organs, the skin. And you'd better like it raw, which is also how you'd eat all your nuts. No salt, either. (blech--bunny brains without salt! I always eat my salted!) You should give away your refridgerator and store all your gathered meat at room temp. Following a true paleolithic diet would even mean passing up grocery-store vegetables, as brocolli, kale, bell peppers, etc are not only neolithic, they've all been bred in the past 200 years. Hardly anything in our grocery stores is actually paleolithic. You'd have to learn to forage for dandelion greens and watercress and wild mushrooms and roots--but even those foods have changed since 40,000 years ago, evolving more than we have (shorter life cycles=faster evolution). And it would mean going pretty hungry at the end of winter, attempting to re-create those evolutionary conditions. If you lived in Miami or Sydney or Capetown or Honolulu, you'd feel particularly silly re-creating ice age eating, don't you think? And finally, it'd mean sending off your DNA for one of those genotype analyses (fairly cheap, I've read--only $150) so that you could see where your ancestors came from and try to recreate foods from that area of the world. Of course, since most large animals have been hunted to extinction by people these last 40,000 years, that'd be a trick. Anybody seen a cave bear lately? Most people are just not capable of never ever again eating a piece of bread, a potato, cheese, the desserts of their childhoods, a tortilla, chickpeas, green beans, salad dressing, rice, soy sauce, etc. etc. (Many people would balk at "no alcohol.") Like all "eliminate whole categories of foods" diets, in a land of plenty, it's going to fail most people. The deer in my neighborhood don't even eat paleo! They just ate a batch of Scottish shortbread I tossed out, and they'll eat croissants and sugary breads and cheese and all sorts of odd things. The easier, the better, they say. They'll pass up grass and leaves all day if you'll feed them a challah with cream cheese instead. Since they can't sign on to internet paleo-deer boards, they go by instinct.

I do think I will pass on trying to eat as my ancestors did 40,000 years ago, LLW, I also like my squirrel salted, thanks. :-) Since those old statues they have found, such as the Venus of Willdendorf, are said to be at least 25,000 years old, I guess we fat girls have always been at least somewhat in existence, & that poor old Venus didn't even get to enjoy the occasional piece of good chocolate for her trouble. I do love my peppers, & I know myself well enough to know how well I would do foraging for wild mushrooms...I would shortly be the LATE Patsy Nevins. I guess I will stick to eating what I like & take my chances.

There is a reason why heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, etc. are called "diseases of civilization." Granted, no one living now can eat a truly paleolithic diet, but one can try to eat the TYPES of food that would have been somewhat available then, while avoiding those that weren't (i.e. bread, pasta, etc.) in order to improve one's health. It's not a matter of being a stickler for detail (i.e. eggs only in the summer), it is about how your body utilizes food. Yes, it does take a bit of discipline. I realize I'm shouting in the wind here, but I suppose I'm a glutton for punishment.

kemelios, you're not shouting into the wind...you're just shouting at people who have heard it all and read it all and had it all done to them by nasty people who 'just want to help.' Just want to help with amphetamines, urine shots, starvation, liquid fasts, vegetarianism, paleo, low fat, low carb, a little surgery won't hurt you, yada yada yada. And they're only trying to 'help' us because fat is bad--well, no, they don't have any proof that fat is unhealthy (or that butter is bad or brown rice is or a chicken leg is, for that matter). But fat is gross, so fat is ugly, and fat is bad, so you shouldn't be fat, and pick your favorite tautology. As a fat person, you aren't familiar with all that? There's an interesting paper by Dr. Harvey Levinstein about food moralists. Here's a bit from the abstract: "In the twentieth century, this underlying tendency to fear food became the basis for two kinds of movements restricting enjoyment of food. Moralists of various kinds continued to advocate dietary restrictions to bring moral or political improvement. Medical science looked increasingly at food as a source of illness and death. The two streams, moral and medical, converged in the 1960?s. By then, the food industries had become dominated by giant enterprises who spent enormous sums promoting their products. Although they themselves had become prime targets of the moralists, they managed to co-opt their drive for "natural" foods. They also managed to take advantage of health and fashion concerns and, in the course of promoting their products, become major forces in fostering "lipophobia" and other fears inhibiting people from regarding eating as an enjoyable activity." No reliable evidence exists that any particular food is bad for you. Some people say eat fake butter cuz the real stuff will kill you, others scream at the idea of transfatty acids in the fake stuff. May they get stuck in an elevator together for eternity. The fact is, you're gonna die, and probably the final months (or years) of your life are gonna be pretty sucky as your body wears down to its end. Nothing we can do will change that. Life is short. Pleasure is part of our hardwiring, and part of what makes life interesting. Food is one source of pleasure. Sex is another. Laughing is another. Dancing is another. I wonder why people don't have hysterically held opinions about how, say, ballet or line dancing are unnatural or unpaleo and should be eschewed in favor of the watusi, damn it, NOW. And I bet you more hospital visits result from ballet than result from encounters with baguettes.

LLW The deer in your neighnorhood, like the ducks in the parks and like the average American are favoring artificial and/or processed foods over healthier raw foods. That is why some of the more wildife conscious parks ask folks not to feed breads, crackers and cookies to the birds/wildlife. They soon come to the same fate as humans - sickly from over-consumption of empty calories. These days most of the food in the center aisles of supermarkets is processed beyond belief. Try to find something that does not contain high-fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils. Not to mention artificial colors (some of which are banned in European countries) and artificial flavors. Even our fresh produce is questionable. Is it organic? GMO or non-GMO? Nutra-Cleen? So, I can see the attraction kemolios has to this paleo way of eating. It seems the spirit of this lifestyle is to get back to eating foods as nature intented. As for the Atkins diet, it gets quick results and allows people to eat forbidden foods. But obviously anyone with a working set of frontal lobes must know that a long-term diet of bacon and cheese is unhealthy. The bottom line - people don't care. Our society is so twisted that plenty of people are convinced that a being thinner on fats and proteins(constipation,clogged arteries and all) is better than eating those evil, fattening fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

People are living longer than ever. That is hardly compatable with a condemnation of humanity as "sickly from overconsumpsion of empty calories". That is a mindset supportly solely in the assumpsion that fat=death. An assumpsion with very little to back it, indeed. Atkins works like every other diet. Offer quick results, end of story. What we ought to do is to stop stigmatizing eating as some great moral/medical failing that has cripple humanity. Its just not true.

Brian, too sane. All this dietary yammer is all about fatphobia. You can tell how 'helpful' people really are trying to be by how nasty their voices are when they advise you in person. Even if they couch their codependent crapola in "health" terms, they can't resist adding, "and you'll lose weight!" As if that's a good thing. I also chortle at how these people ignore statistics when they disprove their current food-as-morals theory. The French diet: cream, butter, cheese, white bread, goose livers, strong coffee, etc. Heart disease rates? low. The Swiss are the healthiest people in the world, with the longest life expectancies (I believe) in Europe. Plenty of dairy and some chocolate. Okay, so "anyone knows that cheese is bad" can't be very good intuition, can it? Vegetarians would swear theirs is the way to go...but people in India who escew meat have ten times the heart disease rate as those who chew their meat. And on and on.

Yeah, but the French eat much smaller portions than Americans do, drink more red wine (lots of antioxidants and other good stuff), and walk around more. Honestly, LLW, I think it's dishonest of you to dismiss dietary information (as in overall diet vs. weight-loss diet) that you happen not to agree with while holding up these other statistics that you do happen to like, such as the info about the French and the meat-eating South Asians. Eating less-processed food and fewer refined carbs and sugars is good for you no matter who you are or what you weigh. That's just common sense, not "lipophobia".

One of the more amusing notes I've seen on the subject of the differences in cultural eating habits and health sequelae went something like this: The French eat lots of animal fat and drink lots of red wine and have lower heart disease rates than Americans, Canadians, or British. The Japanese drink very little red wine, consume little animal fat, eat lots of rice and soy and have lower heart disease rates than Americans, Canadians, or British. The moral of the story? Eat whatever you want. It's speaking English that kills.

Lol.

*cracks up laughing* Andee, you made me forget what I was going to say (which is probably a good thing considering that I've got Chronic Foot In Mouth Disease). Priceless.

There is a big difference between Low Carbing and -restricting- carbs. Many diabetics, especially fat diabetics with insulin resistance problems, find that reducing and/or juggling the carbs they eat can greatly affect their blood sugar readings. Also, most people absorb and process different kinds of carbos in different kinds of ways. Rather than have a person medically spend time trying to find what carbos have what reactions, Atkins et. al. does the overkill of banning or strictly reducing all carbos. I think the greatest irony of Atkins & diabetes is that apparently Atkins himself said that his diet was not recommended for diabetics, because of the chance of stressing the kidneys, yet because of the "dramatic" change in blood sugar readings, some "studies" and medical hornblowers are pushing the Atkins diet for diabetics. Talk about re-inventing history!

Yes, I confess, Adrienne, I was "lying." Here's The Truth, which we're all familiar with: Every nutritional researcher, physician, and physiologists agrees that there are exactly 287 healthy foods, and we all know exactly which ones they are. There is no debate on this. The list of 287 is the same list of ten years ago, twenty, and thirty. It will be the same ten and twenty years from today. Eating those foods in specified amounts will guarantee a life free of disease. All nutritional research is pure, conducted outside the realm of global economics and outside the cultural influences. The researchers themselves are saint-like people who have mastered the art of objectivity. Their researches are funded by the Nutritional Research Fairy, who has no vested interest in the outcomes. Oddly, ever correlation between food and any health matter they have ever found is 1.0, and even more oddly, in the realm of nutrition and health, correlation equals causation. When these results get reported on, say, The Today Show, there is no interaction between the editorial and advertising departments at NBC in deciding how to announce this "news," just as there was none when the Today Show spent three hours on the "news event" of Vanilla Coke's release. The FDA and USDA (I know only of the US situation, but I'm sure it's as pristine elsewhere) are headed by people with no connections to any vested interests. In fact, exiled Tibetan monks and consumer advocates run those agencies. No multinational conglomerate in the food or additive business has ever offered bribe or sinecure to agency executive or U.S. Congress member, nor, had any such bribes been offered, would they have been taken because such men are above reproach. They have taken excellent care of our health, at great cost to themselves, and prevented any unhealthy food or drug from ever reaching store shelves. Phew! Felt great to confess all that truth, I must admit. Now I'll take my sinful body away, and instead of eating what I'm hungry for, I'll read the list of 287 foods and force three of those down, in the prescribed amounts and combinations, even if it gives me hives or indigestion.

Hee Hee! That was great LLW! Do you happen to know where I could find that paper by Dr. Harvey Levinstein? As a sociologist, I am very interested in the cultural relationship between food and morality (and the latent functions it supports). p.s. I have also read studies that found the French eat more calories than Americans. Portion size aside, they tend to have more courses than we do. It is possible the researchers who focused on portion size were stuck on the old calories in vs. out paradigm and made the facts fit the theory rather than the other way around.

I have also heard that about the French, Sherie. I watch the Food Network fairly often &, interestingly enough, a good many of the French chefs who guest on some of the shows are fat. I watched "Tyler's Ultimate" last night, & he visited both England & France, working with a chef in each country, seeing how they cooked roast chicken, to put together his "ultimate" chicken recipe. He mentioned during the French portion of the show, that during his dinner with the French people, they sat at the table for several hours, until one in the morning or so, eating & drinking wine, & generally eating a good deal of food indeed. There was more food on that table than I have ever served for a meal, outside of the Thanksgiving feasts I have cooked. Great post, LLW, I laughed, too. Isn't it wonderful that all the researchers are so pure & noble, that none of them is fatphobic, or on the payroll of any of the companies making diet drugs, & that no studies are ever funded by Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig? And isn't it indeed wonderful that they are so consistent all the time, never wavering between butter or margarine, or telling us to eat lots of fish, then saying that people who eat fish too often have elevated mercury levels in their blood, or saying that fat people are more likely to get Alzheimer's, then also saying that those who read a lot have it less frequently, then on to say that those who eat fish at least once weekly are less likely to get it? Yes, those researchers are wonderful humanitarians, as of course are all politicians & everyone in the diet industry, & of course they also so obviously know EXACTLY what they are talking about! I notice that when discussions of health among my net friends or discussions of menopause involve statements such as "Eat soy products, especially tofu," followed by, "Soy interferes with the body's ability to absorb calcium", interspersed with, "Eating too much soy may cause cancer & other illnesses." I have gotten headaches & bordered on anxiety attacks trying to figure out what was the right thing to do; now I take my multivitamin, my calcium & my fish oil capsules, exercise daily, & try to eat well, but I eat what I want. My brother-in-law always said that "expert" meant "has-been drip." I think he had a point.

Honestly, LLW, did you really think it would be okay to suggest a counter arguement? Shame on you for disagreeing with some research, and finding different research more persuasive. How utterly dishonest of you! Why, I've never seen a fat basher come here and dismiss anything that isn't anti-fat while elevating what they do agree with. Oh, wait. Well, then didn't you know only anti-fat people get to have research and only anti-fat people get to dismiss information they don't agree with? At least you've seen the light. The sooner we foolish size-acceptance types learn that we are not allowed to disagree with fat negativity, the better. After all, they're right. They said so and all, so it must be true.

About the French. Patsy, yeah, on some days the French eat like we do on Thanksgiving. Overall.... sorry, Adrienne is more correct. Yeah, there are meals that last hours. Most, however, do not. I lived in France for much of my life. I've been back in the US for the past 13 years. Now granted, like everywhere in the world, things are changing in France which is why, I read, their rate of heart disease is going up. I lived mainly in Toulouse, land of cassoulet (yum!) and foie gras (not my thing!). Portion sizes are smaller. Much much smaller. And typically they do eat many courses. But each course is small, sometimes just a few bites. People eat lots of fruits and veggies (along with their cheese). Food is less processed. At least traditionally, there are few "transfats": it's saturated (butter, cream) or it's oil. Very little shortening. Other bit is that "seconds" is not something people typically do. When making chicken, for example, there is a piece for everyone, but typically not more. Traditionally as well, the main meal is eaten at noon. Evening meal is usually soup, some bread, maybe a yogurt. Also, except for school children, people do not snack. At all. They eat 3 meals a day and that's it. Also people tend to eat fresh foods, more seasonally tan we do. And a larger variety of foods. And two other bits: in general people are more active. If you take the Metro to work, you do have to walk to and from, etc. Most people, again at least when I was there, didn't do the "door to door" stuff that we do. And the other point isn't good: alot of French people smoke. Again, alot of this has changed since I left France, and again, heart disease is on the upswing there. The BIG difference, I do beleive, is that, overall, the French have not screwed up their perception of why we eat and how to eat. They eat foie gras a few times a year and don't obsess endlessly about it (unlike our collective guilt fest pre-counting Thanksgiving calories, eating said calories, counting them after.). They eat to hunger and usually no more. They enjoy what they eat. As a result I think they eat less... because there is no "last meal" :-) issues like many of us in the US have. Overall, I doubt the French way of eating will survive and I doubt the French will get their "free pass" for much longer. I know their rates of obesity are up as are their heart disease issues. But traditionallythey have had a very different pattern of eating and of perceiving food, as well as a different palette of foods, thanAmericans and I beleive this is what made the difference.

|I'm read in an British newspaper that the Atkins diet is now linked to kidney stones in women. I've never had a kidney stone, but I hear that they're something awful and to be avoided at all costs. THe article appeared in today's (July 22, 2003) edition of "The Scotsman."

Funny thing, Leila, isn't it.....when Europeans start to live more like Americans -- eating high-fat foods with lots of refined starches -- and moving around more, they start to suffer higher disease rates like the Americans do. And they gain weight. But of course, that is absolutely, purely coincidental, and is due to the hidden disease genes that only happen to express themselves at the same time that McDonalds happens to start becoming a more popular food outlet and physical exercise becomes less common. The fact that this has happened in several countries and cultures only makes this coincidence that much more startling.

Yeah, the French unabashedly love food. Traditionally they rejected fast food for the aberration that it is in favor of exquisitely prepared foods to be savored. And yeah, they eat to satisfaction, they don't scarf down their food while on the run like we Americans are doing more and more. But unfortunately, the ugly tentacles of McDonalds and CocaCola have been taking root in France for a while now. :(

Miss a few days and....(scroll, scroll) Brian, People may be living longer than ever but that's due more to the adavncement of medical technology than to our healthy lifestyles. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc.,. are on the rise. The "sickly from over-consumption of empty calories" comment stands. I don't moralize against people's eating habits. My comment concerned the over-processing of the vast majority of our supermarket foods. Whether you choose to eat an apple or a Twinkie is your business and no concern of mine. However, to claim that eating a Twinkie is just as good as eating an apple, is pure nonsense. LLW, Yes, the French eat cheese, cream, butter and all the rest. I should know, I gained ten pounds eating my way through that glorious country! :-) But as was mentioned already, they eat smaller portions, they walk more, and eat real food as opposed to say, Cheez Nips and Oreos, for example. With more people driving rather than walking, their collective weight is going up. I lived in Japan for five years. The older generation (seniors) live forever and eat a low-fat, traditional Japanese diet. However, the women suffer from extreme osteoporosis, due to the lack of dairy in this diet. Their childrens' generation is suffering from cancer at a much higher rate. Specifically, stomach cancer. They eat more red meat (sign of affluence), fewer raw vegetable and more fried foods. Brown rice or genmai(peasant rice) has been replaced by polished (no fiber) white rice. The kids are the hardest hit. Virtually every train station in Kansai has either a McDonalds or a Japanese version of McDonalds (ie Lotteria). The teenagers pack these places and have rebuffed tofu, rice and fish for Big Macs, fries and Cokes. Haagen Daz ruleZ and (low-fat) mochi droolz. They are significantly taller and fatter than their grandparents. Like it or not, there is a connection between what we eat and our health. But that only seemed like common sense to me.

Patsy wrote: "And isn't it indeed wonderful that they are so consistent all the time, never wavering between butter or margarine, or telling us to eat lots of fish, then saying that people who eat fish too often have elevated mercury levels in their blood, or saying that fat people are more likely to get Alzheimer's, then also saying that those who read a lot have it less frequently, then on to say that those who eat fish at least once weekly are less likely to get it?" You're right about the apparently inconsistent nature of health claims from one year to the next. Here's what a medical doctor had to say about this issue on the NAAFA boards: "Most lay people view science as something that is definite and precise, whereas, in reality, even in fields like chemistry and physics there is contradictory evidence and disagreements as to interpretation. In medicine, where practical and ethical considerations greatly limit the sorts of experiments that can be conducted, the situation is a good deal worse. But it's a comparison between a field with evidence containing a relatively small amount of "noise" and a field with evidence containing a relatively larger amount, not one between certainty and "not knowing sh*t". Despite the uncertainty in physics and chemistry, we're able to make cars that run reasonably well and planes that don't crash most of the time, and despite the much greater uncertainty in medicine we are usually able to recommend treatments that (in the modern era), on balance, help more than they hurt. To do this, you need to look at the total body of evidence, of all types, and come up with a synthesis that explains all of the facts in the simplest way possible (i.e. you need to apply Occam's razor). If you look at just certain selected pieces of the evidence you can prove more or less whatever you want, since nobody who really understands what's going on expects all results to be in absolute agreement in the first place. However, if you look at the total body of the evidence you can often detect a distinct overall trend. It would be nice if things were more certain, but that simply is not the way the physical world works. We live in an unavoidably non-Newtonian universe. I don't know for certain that the next time I drop a hammer it will fall to the floor. I only know that, based upon past history, there is a very large probability that it will do so, and that is enough to get by on in everyday life."

"Pursuit of weight loss is dangerous at all times": Why? I don't see how losing 10 pounds is dangerous if you lose it sensibly. Unless you are an adult and you weigh 100 pounds loosing 10 is not necessarily bad for you and harmful to your health...how you do it could be though (Atikins and the strain on the kidneyes, ephedra etc.) I'm not advocating dieting (I've learnt my lesson!), I'm just saying that a blanket statement stating that all dieting is dangerous is ludicrous. Just like saying persuit of weight gain is dangerous...

What do you mean "like saying persuit of weight gain is dangerous"? Since when does anyone advocate for weight gain? Likewise to Mary's need to point out what nonsense saying twinkies are nutrionally equal to apples is. No one said that, so why the need to point it out? Both statements only serve to confuse what you are arguing against by infering that anyone here has made such a statement. Whether intentional or not, you are being misleading with regards to the viewpoints you propose to disagree with and that is grave, indeed. I'm especially troubled by your remark, Emily, because it is so willfully detached from the reality of this discussion. No one here is advocating intentional weight gain, and if that is your misunderstanding you really have no one to blame but yourself for such unfounded confusion. Indeed, I suspect many would say that all persuit of weight gain is dangerous. The notion that weight loss is okay if its "sensible" is a fallacy, and one which LLW already explained. Indeed, you are prompting her to defend a statement she's already defending while showing little recognition of the points she raises when expanding upon her comment. I agree with her very much. All attempts to measure one's health or worth by weight are wrong-minded from the start and fundamentally dangerous as a result. There is no sensible way to adopt a combative and destructive relationship with one's body. Weight loss may not always be dangerous, but the persuit of it most certainly is.

I'm sorry, I should have been more specific in my second sentence. I meant to say "Since when does anyone *here* advocate for weight gain." Certainly, I realize that there is a small and over-emphasized community which does, but I was intending to reference this community. My mistake for not being more explicit in the first place.

Brian, are you saying (just checking here) that there are no people whose health could benefit from gaining ten pounds, and no one whose health would benefit from losing ten? I hope I've misunderstood, because that sounds pretty fanatical and simply against logic-- since I personally know people in both groups.

"You are being misleading with regards to viewpoints you propose to disagree with and that is grave indeed." Brian, First of all, let's not get overly dramatic or wallow too deeply in our sense of self- importance. There's nothing "grave indeed" about any of my posts or I suspect any of yours. While you did not specify apples vs. Twinkies as I did (which I did for the obvious purpose of illustrating a point), you did suggest that my concerns regarding the introduction of processed foods into our diet and the subsequent effects on our health were baseless as we are living longer than ever. I have already commented my views on that. As for this simplistic mantra that anyone who tries to connect eating habits with health has been brainwashed by fat=death psuedo-science, I have a question. When did you develop the ability to read my mind or determine my mindset? I'm not condoning weight loss or any diet. I am simply saying (well, it seemed simple to me) that America's consumption of over-processed foods is taking its toll on our health.

Mary, I did not get the impression that anyone here is defending processed food, or saying eating habits do not make any difference at all. My understanding is that some posters were simply commenting on the pervasive practice of latching on to a fad diet (from Atkins to Paleolithic) and making it a panacea for any and every health ailment. I think the point that LLW made about the morality of food and eating is quite valid. If we view things too dogmatically, it is hard to be objective. Her French example was perfect. We religiously adhere to a doctrine that says faulty lifestyles cause heart disease and obesity. Here is a group of people who apparently eat more fat and have less obesity and heart disease. When faced with contradictory evidence, any scientist worth her salt, and any lay critical thinker does not simply dismiss it. Rather, they take it into consideration with all the other evidence to see if we can't develop a more sophisticated understanding of the larger picture. Are there mitigating factors such as fruit, veggie, or wine consumption? More exercise? Processed vs. "real" food? Or something else all together? When cultures "Americanize" and heart disease and obesity go up, we are very quick to point out fast food as the culprit (and I am NOT saying there is nothing to this). But, there are other health dangers as well. For instance, weight obsession and weight reducing diets! More pollution! More hectic lifestyles! (Stress has been found to produce hormones that can contribute to both heart disease and obesity.) Even breakdown of community! Years ago, there was an interesting study that paired Irish brothers across the Atlantic. Guess what! The Irishmen in Ireland ate more fat and were fatter than their brothers in the US, but they had a lower rate of heart disease. Researchers speculated that, detached from their traditional communities, the Irish ÈmigrÈs had more stress and less social support. Many, many factors contribute to health. Do we want to be superstitious about it, constantly seeking the latest miracle diet as a talisman to ward off all evil? Or would we rather be realistic and see improvement in diet as one of many things we can do to be healthier? I think many people choose the first option because it is easier. Diet is within our control, and we don't have to put our differences aside to work together for a healthier world. But the degree that diet obession creates a false sense of security is the degree that it robs us of our initiative for social change.

FnF, I am saying that focusing on weight to remedy health problems has extraordinarily weak merits and that the overwhelmingly negative impact attempts at weight management has had far outweight any possible benefit should such weight manipulation succeed. I'm saying that a weight nuetral approach is what is desirable. One which does not say someone is 10lbs away from better health, but reasonably and moderately considers a person's health and ways to improve it which are not measured by numbers on a scale. To stated goal of any particular diet does nothing to change what it is, and the powerfully negative impact the persuit of weight loss at all levels has had upon our culture. If positive changes happen to result in weight gain or loss, so be it. No one here is saying that such should be condemned. What concerns me, and others, is the persuit. There are better ways which do not present the pitfalls and dangers which are inherant to attempted manipulation of one's weight.

Great post, Sherie! I agree, especially about the false sense of security that people derive from dieting. (In fact, I was just griping elsewhere about the awful Jenny Craig ad that came out after 9/11 that really played into people's fears about catastrophe and offered weight loss as a solution. It featured a teacher who worried that she'd be "too fat" to assist her students in the event of a terrorist attack or other emergency.)

"lol, patsy, about paleolithic people dying young! I hope you live til 90, and give 'em heck the whole time." - LLW Sherie, I think LLW's disrespectful attitude towards kamelois paleo diet choice smacks of holier-than-thou morality. Who is she to judge anyone based on their food choices? Kamelois wasn't saying everyone should eat as she does. She simply said this is how she eats and it works for her. Of the two, LLW seems far angrier and more judgemental. As you say, many people jump on the latest diet bandwagon (ala The Atkins Diet) and want to lose alot of weight quickly. However, there are others who just want to eat healthier and just happen to lose weight as well. Why target such people for hostility? I have already addressed the French example but I'll repeat: It is not "apparent" that they eat more fat. They snack less often and eat smaller portions. The average American-sized croissant is much bigger than a French-sized croissant. While the French drink coffee (maybe w/ cream and sugar - usually black) Americans are at Starbucks ordering coffee drinks that sometimes contain enough calories for an entire meal. And the French drive less and walk more. Why does a person have to be labelled "fatphobic" just because they prefer to eat salads over pork rinds?

Sherie, beautifully said, much better said than any of my posts! Brian, as always, right on target. "Grave" is exactly what diet obsessions are. Restrictive diets cause anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Add the deaths from weight loss surgery and suicide of brutally teased fat kids, and you're talking deaths in at least in the thousands--more likely tens of thousands, world wide, every year. Death of innocents, mostly children and women in their prime. Deaths that cut off forty or fifty years of life even had they eaten pure junk food for all those years (which no one does), full lives which could have been lived fat (or medium) and self-lovingly, amazing lives snuffed out. Death for absolutely no reason but pure greed. Murders, in fact. Murders. Dietmongers are no better than crack dealers. As a reformed one, (er, not a crack dealer), I am ashamed, and I apologize to everyone in the world for ever having been a part of such a hateful, murderous system. I will continue to speak my truth, though it might never expiate the sin of pushing diets. Patsy, I love to make people laugh. Thanks! Yeah, the butter thing is wild. My mother believed the margarine propaganda, but just couldn't hack the taste, so she guiltily stayed with butter. I've never eaten I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Dogbarf myself, so now, with my butter, I'm back in vogue! Wait long enough, & your preferred foods, too, will become a best-selling diet! This diet stuff is so much self-delusion, such sleight of hand, such code for other issues, often sexual issues. I know, I have been there. I'm not saying, "you," I'm implicating my former self, too. Following a strict diet is trying to "be good." But what if this is true? You are good already--a shining Light, a gift of The Universe, a unique creation in the history of all time, and that's true no matter what you eat or what you weigh. Is that so painful to believe?