Why the Atkins diet is healthy

By RFD Columnist Malcolm Kendrick MbChB, MRCGP
(email - malcolm@llp.org.uk )

I was idly watching a programme on the Atkins diet last night which, to my surprise, was reasonably balanced. Yes folks, the Atkins diet has crossed the pond to reach the United Kingdom. Although, in reality, all it is doing is returning. After all we invented it nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

A man called Banting promoted a diet pretty much indistinguishable from that of Atkins in 1863. In fact, the verb to ‘bant’ is used in Sweden as a term for going on a diet

To find out more about the Banting diet (now known as the Atkins diet) go here.

Anyway, reasonably balanced or not, on this programme there was still an unquestioned view that, even if the Atkins diet did help with weight loss, it was still damaging to health. It would cause kidney disease, and osteoporosis and heart disease. Various professors of nutrition were wheeled out to condemn the Atkins diet as dangerous nonsense.

Ignoring the kidney disease and the osteoporosis for now, the nutritional professors made the usual statements. For example, ‘It is known that saturated fat increases the level of blood cholesterol and causes CHD.’ They didn’t quote any evidence for this. As far as they were concerned it is just a known fact.

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