Confessions of a Former Women's Magazine Writer

Marilynn Larkin

Writing about "hot" nutrition topics still has impact. During the decade or so that I wrote for women's magazines, I received much positive feedback from readers.

In 1989, at the height of oat bran's popularity as a panacea to lower cholesterol, the president and chief operating officer of a leading cereal manufacturer estimated that sales of oat-bran cereals would grow to nearly $600 million annually. I wrote five oat-bran stories that year for various women's magazines. A year later, when a study called oat bran's health-promoting properties into question, sales plummeted 50% within a week; at that point, I couldn't give away an article on oat bran.

I also covered other "hot" nutrition topics. But although they appeared on the nutrition page, these articles tended to be either "food-of-the-month" stories (the grapefruit diet, carrot power) or quasi-entertainment pieces that positioned foods as medicine: to fight cancer, strengthen the immune system, lower blood pressure, cut cholesterol, stave off heart attacks, prevent osteoporosis, reduce stress, or improve your sex life.

Earning a living this way was quick, easy, and -- for a while at least -- fun. I readily recycled material from publication to publication, since all were prone to hopping on the same bandwagons. And editors who saw my work in one magazine often asked me to "do a story like this for our audience." It never dawned on me that I might be misleading the public by promoting "food-as-magic-bullet" mythology. I labored under the illusion that by carefully executing assignments according to the editors' parameters, I was informing the public and being a good writer.

What I was really doing was helping to sell magazines by presenting a lopsided point of view: the world according to women's magazine editors. Their world (and my assignments) was shaped primarily by two considerations: providing a "nice environment" for advertisers and making sure readers were not challenged by anything more than simple tips for healthy living. (The word healthful does not exist in women's magazine stylesheets.)

Elizabeth Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., president of the American Council on Science and Health, has repeatedly accused women's magazines of shirking responsibility by focusing on trivia and ignoring the devastating effects of cigarette smoking. In the early 1990s, for example, in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, she said:

What advice do the magazines offer on how to stay healthy? Here is a sampling: Eat lots of broccoli to ward off cancer . . . take vitamins E and C and beta-carotene; eat garlic to fight colds and flu . . . and eat active-culture yogurt to live longer.

Conflicting views are seldom presented in women's magazines. After all, the "logic" goes, readers might become confused if they actually have to weigh more than one side of a story. Instead, editors usually decide in advance what readers should think, infantilizing readers in the process. This condescending philosophy was a major reason why I decided to get out of the whole business and into writing for physicians. Today, a decade after making the transition, I still savor the fact that I am writing for grown-ups.

How Articles Evolve

One reason why trivial and/or incorrect nutrition advice appear so often is the desire to please the magazines' lifeline: advertisers. Most marketing executives view women's magazines as "products" or "vehicles" that are part of a "marketing package" for their wares. That's where the "nice environment" comes in. Before agreeing to buy space, advertisers want to know what kinds of articles will appear in the magazine -- and, particularly, what copy will appear near the ad. "Negative" stories -- topics that may upset readers or otherwise interfere with a "feel-good" atmosphere -- are routinely rejected. Unfortunately, this means that manuscripts that tell the truth (for example, that the link between specific foods and specific health effects is largely hype) seldom get published.

"Women's magazines are controlled by advertisers in ways that other magazines aren't," Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem told a gathering of writers from the American Society of Journalists and Authors in 1991. She described how women's magazines began as catalogs, with short stories woven in between the ads. The link between advertising and editorial has remained, she said, creating a situation wherein "85% of women's magazine copy is really 'unmarked advertorial.'" A few months later, co-founder Patricia Carbine talked about "Advertising and Editorial -- The Uneasy Coexistence" to a group of advertising, marketing, and public relations professionals attending a forum on business ethics. "Advertisers are insisting on concessions from women's service magazines that they wouldn't insist on from Time or Newsweek," she said. According to Ms. Carbine, declining circulation has put even greater pressure on women's publications to continually cross the line between advertising and editorial. Examples include presenting a certain number of recipes that use soup as an ingredient to satisfy a soup advertiser, or refusing to run results of "taste tests" that could offend an advertiser whose product appears at the bottom of the heap.

When I wrote regular nutrition columns for women's magazines, my topics were determined in most cases by advertisements already commissioned or those the publication hoped to bring in. "[A major cereal manufacturer] is advertising in September. Why don't you do a fiber story for that issue?" one editor suggested. "We'd love to get an ad from [a leading manufacturer of lowfat dairy products]. We want you to do a story on foods that are low in fat and high in calcium," said another.

Michael Hoyt, associate editor of Columbia Journalism Review, has expressed concern about the blurred boundaries between advertising and editorial content. In the March/April 1990 issue, in an article called "When The Walls Come Tumbling Down," he stated:

From a reader's perspective this confluence of advertising and editorial is confusing: Where does the sales pitch end? Where does the editor take over? ... Magazines of all stripes are suddenly competing to give advertisers something extra -- "value added" in ad-world lingo -- in return for their business. Many of these extras are perfectly legitimate and have little or nothing to do with editorial content; others fall into a gray and foggy area; still others involve the selling of pieces of editorial integrity, from slivers to chunks to truckloads.

When it comes to nutrition information, the "confusion" Hoyt alludes to is rampant. In a recent interview (not for a women's magazine), Richard Rivlin, M.D., of New York Hospital told me: "The public is enormously confused. They need a better understanding of the role nutrition plays with respect to disease. We haven't been doing a very good job of putting things in perspective." Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Rivlin stressed that it is more realistic to think that good nutrition can help delay the onset or reduce the effects of such illnesses as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes -- not that nutrition can prevent or eliminate these disorders entirely. He added that proper nutrition won't do much to protect an individual who continues to smoke cigarettes, drinks excessively, or leads a sedentary lifestyle.

But that type of moderate message seldom makes its way into magazines where "food as medicine" themes are regarded as an essential editorial ingredient. During my tenure as a health and nutrition writer, I wrote everything from the "diet that can save your life" to the "fertility diet" and the "brain power diet." I also wrote about diets to calm your kids, boost their I.Q., and keep them from becoming overweight adults.

The Ingredients of a "Good" Nutrition Article

The other force that drives the editorial content of women's magazines is the desire to grab attention to boost sales. The quickest, surest way to sell article ideas to a women's magazine is to come up with a great cover line. Once I learned this secret, getting assignments was a snap. Whereas some writers labored long and hard over query letters, I would think up titles and bullet them on a page, fleshing out the "story" with one or two sentences. Examples include: "16 Great Food Finds," "20 Hunger-Fighting Foods," "6 Myths That Keep You Fat," and "What Your Snacks Say About You." At least 75% of the topics I proposed in this way ended up as assignments.

Of course, the process also worked in reverse. Editors would call me and say, "We want such-and-such story (naming a provocative headline). You figure out what to put in the article." Although all this smacks of deception, I did have scruples. Despite the jazzy-sounding titles, in most instances I merely repackaged basic nutrition advice into my articles, slipping in qualifiers ("there's no proof as yet") for spurious speculations and liberally peppering my articles with "may" and "they speculate." Does this excuse me? Not really. What astounds me in retrospect is how many "experts" were willing to go along with this charade.

Another essential ingredient in good articles is the voice of authority. As a women's magazine writer, I needed "experts" to validate my editor's point of view. Many "experts" who regularly appear in women's magazines are willing to trade scientific credibility for the opportunity to have their name in print. Some would give me quotes even when the premise of a story made little sense. For example, one women's magazine editor asked me to do a feature article called "Ten Foods to Make You Prettier." I balked, saying that unless an "expert" would corroborate that such a story could include some substance, I wouldn't do it. I was given the name of an "authority" at the school of public health of a major university. She convinced me it could be done and provided me with additional sources. I not only wrote the article but recycled it to other women's publications under such titles as "Eat Your Way to Perfect Skin" and "Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep."

Some "experts" I had quoted once were only too pleased to appear in subsequent articles -- but not just the spin-offs. In some cases, they "trusted me" to put quotes in their mouths without even doing another interview or clearing the information with them. At one point, I had a psychiatrist, a psychologist, several nutritionists, an eating disorder specialist, and a dietitian that I could pull out of my hat (by making up quotes based on past interviews) whenever an editor wanted a particular viewpoint point substantiated. In other words, I had "instant sources."

I won't speculate on the reasons why people with M.D.s and Ph.D.s (the ones most coveted as sources by women's magazines), who presumably know better, permit themselves to be used in that way. The fact is, many do. Of course, not all have been manipulated. But I'll bet that most are not challenged, either by the writer who interviews them or by others who are quoted.

"Hiring" of Writers

A little-publicized, unethical practice that is more common than writers would like to admit can directly affect what "expert" information gets into a women's magazine and what doesn't. On several occasions, people from public relations agencies representing weight-loss centers and other clients have called me with a proposition. They would "hire" me to write a nutrition story that quoted their client if I would "place" it in a women's magazine. For an unscrupulous writer, this is an opportunity to be paid twice for the same article. I have consistently refused such work, telling callers that if their client's views were appropriate for something I am writing, they would be used without charge.

In another typical women's magazine scenario, the writer is required to skip attribution altogether -- the rationale being that "we want the magazine to be the authority." The result of this abuse of power is that the magazine gives itself a free hand to say whatever it wants, merely by having the writer pepper the article with convenient phrases such as "experts agree," "scientists have found," and "experts say." What experts? The writer and editor, of course.

Style over Substance

Another practice that makes it easier for writers to write for women's magazines than for many other publications -- and that has the potential of leaving readers seriously misinformed -- is lack of fact-checking. Although some women's magazines call sources to check quotes for accuracy and require writers to provide backup material for statistics, many (I would venture to guess most) don't. I wrote weekly nutrition columns for one women's magazine that preferred to be the authority (in other words, no experts were to be quoted). In more than a year and a half, no one on the magazine's staff ever asked where I got my information. Each column was composed of an article that provided a good headline, a Q&A that I had made up (including a name and city for the supposed writer), and a "fast fact" pertaining to nutrition (for example, that 40% of consumers eat vanilla ice cream). No one ever asked where my "fast facts" came from.[Editor's note: Fact-checking can improve accuracy, but does not guarantee it. When checkers limit their contact to people mentioned in the article, errors originating from inaccurate or misleading sources may go undetected. The only way to ensure accuracy is expert prepublication review -- a process few media outlets utilize.]

In addition to a catchy headline and good sources, the article must "lay out well" on the page. Typically this means using sidebars and boxes, with cute little quizzes ("What's Your Nutrition IQ?"; "Are You An Emotional Eater?"), fascinating facts ("Did You Know..."), or 2-day "starter menus" for special diet stories. It's a plus if the article itself can be done up in an easy-to-swallow format, such as "Your A-Z Guide To Fighting Fat," "Seven Secrets Every Thin Person Knows," or "Nutrition Myths That Keep You Fat." Editors seem to assume that straightforward stories won't be read, that readers must be entertained, and that "text-heavy" pages will intimidate them.

The women's magazine writer must also understand an editor's mandate to "work with the art director." In many cases, this means the writer must include points in the text to validate the accompanying photos. For example, if the art director thinks a story on summer fruit would "look great" accompanied by a photo of bananas, grapefruit, and kiwi fruit, then the writer must make sure these fruits are mentioned in the article. Sometimes the photography is planned or even executed before the article is written.

The power of the art director was carried ad absurdum in one article I wrote on eating "mini-meals." I had paid a registered dietitian to plan meals that would meet all the Recommended Dietary Allowances for adult women. Imagine my shock when my editor called to demand that a meal be changed to include the foods that the art director thought would "look good on the page." "Luscious strawberries" and "juicy orange slices" would have to replace raisins and bananas!

The final ingredient in a "good" nutrition story is the writing style. Three tones are permitted:

Bouncy two-year-old: "Don't wait! Start now on our power-packed, energy-boosting diet."
Concerned parent: "Eclairs are tempting, so have one -- very occasionally . . . If you do have one, make it your only indulgence that day"; "If you must use white sauce, remember: the thinner the sauce, the thinner you'll stay."
Pseudosophisticated friend "Of course you can diet and lose weight. You've done it before . . . and before that . . . but each time the pounds you shed creep back, causing you to groan with disappointment when you step on the scale. Yet we all know women whose weight rarely fluctuates more than a pound or two and former fatties who managed to lose weight and keep it off for good . . . Now, we bring you the real secrets behind their success."
Once a writer has these chatty tones down pat, she simply asks which style the editor wants, and bingo! Another successful assignment!

No Journalistic Skills Required

What probably helped me most in becoming a successful women's magazine writer was the fact that I had no journalism training whatsoever. I have never taken a writing course in my life.

In 1980, I went into business for myself as a freelance public relations person for various agencies in New York City. The skills I acquired made it easy to shift from press kits into women's magazine writing. These included: (1) the ability to write headlines and opening paragraphs that were punchy and attention-grabbing; (2) an unquestioning attitude towards "experts"; and (3) the ability to produce unfailingly upbeat, inoffensive copy.

Writing press kits for new diet pills, migraine medicines, and blood pressure drugs, for example, required me digest complex information and spew it back in easy-to-swallow, bite-size pieces, rarely using words of more than one syllable and remaining as one-dimensional as possible (sound familiar?). Snappy headlines and subheads were more important than hard information -- after all, my primary responsibility was to help ensure that our material wasn't hurled immediately into the "circular file."

I made my first women's magazine contacts when pitching editors with story ideas that would include whatever clients I happened to be handling at the time. If the editors wanted more, I would send a press kit or bulleted list of article ideas that could be built around the client. Some of the "low-end" women's magazines willingly take articles provided by public relations firms, which I promptly produced for them. Several even gave me bylines -- a joy to someone starting out in the field.

These assignments, paid for by the public relations agencies I worked for, provided me with "clips" which I then used to approach larger publications. Soon editors of women's magazines were asking me to write for them on assignment. Within a year, I had so much magazine work that I stopped doing public relations work altogether.

After a number of years playing at this kind of writing, I grew incredibly bored. Women's magazines like to pigeonhole writers (e.g., "health writer," "travel writer," "money writer"). Even though I managed somewhat to defy definition by writing in all three of these categories, editors who gave me "regular work" really wanted me to write the same stories issue after issue, year after year: How to shed five pounds in five days; Think yourself thin; De-stress yourself; Eat right over the holidays; Get in shape for summer; How to stick to your diet while eating out; Why your food diary is your best friend, etc, etc. These are women's magazine "staples" -- the stories readers presumably want to read over and over.

Perhaps it's true. Maybe all those women out there really do want to read that stuff. But if that's the case, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I no longer contribute to the propaganda that feeds such a mindset. And I can't help but believe that women's magazine readers are capable of taking in a healthy dose of hard information, meaningful speculation, and controversy -- about food, nutrition, health, life -- if their favorite magazines would only make the effort, and take the risk, of presenting them.

This article is based on my experiences in writing for more than a dozen women's magazines and talking with fellow journalists. There is no question that some women's magazines have more editorial "depth" than others. Those that cater to "educated" women generally offer less simplistic-sounding articles than those catering to "the secretary in Middle America." And magazines with bigger editorial budgets are apt to subject articles to more scrutiny than those with small budgets and little money for editorial content. Nevertheless, all operate under pressure from the market forces I have described.

Marilynn Larkin is a contributing editor to The Lancet and editor of Caring for the Ages, a newspaper for long-term care practitioners published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. She has produced six consumer health books, the most recent of which is Writing on Health Risk: A Handbook for Journalists, coauthored with toxicologist Michael Kamrin, PhD (American Council on Science and Health, 2000).

Source: http://www.nutriwatch.org/12Media/confessions.html

The Not-So-Funny Bloopers of Jane Brody

Celebrating decades of dietary confusion from the New York Times nutrition writer.

By Anthony Colpo.

March 25, 2004.

For decades, Jane Brody has been espousing the virtues of low-fat, high-carbohydrate nutrition from her syndicated column in the New York Times, one of the world's most widely-read newspapers. Reading one of her more recent columns reinforced in my mind just why so much of the population is utterly confused about what constitutes a healthy diet.

I present the following gems of wisdom from Brody's March 23, 2004 column, Sane Weight Loss in a Carb-Obsessed World - High Fiber and Low Fat.

"Name this product", begins Brody. "The ingredients label says it contains the following: "Water, ultrafiltered fat-free milk, calcium caseinate, cream, buttermilk, tricalcium phosphate, salt, disodium phosphate, mono- and di-glycerides, carrageenan, locust bean gum, natural flavor, sucralose (Splenda), acesulfame potassium, vitamin A palmitate and vitamin D3."

No, it's not some weird dessert. It is Hood's Carb Countdown Dairy Beverage, a low-carb substitute for real skim milk that claims to provide "75 percent less carbs and 50 percent more protein than whole milk." A half-gallon of the Hood's beverage sells for $3.99, compared with $1.48 for the same amount of real, unadulterated fat-free milk."

Brody's description of "...real, unadulterated fat-free milk" is an oxymoron if ever I've heard one! Does Brody know that milk comes from cows, and that in nature there's no such thing as a cow that produces fat-free milk? Does she know that when fat is removed from milk, so too are crucially important fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A and D? That's why synthetic vitamin A and D - "vitamin A palmitate and vitamin D3" - are added back to low-fat and skim milks!

If Brody is attempting to state, in her own clumsy way, that a healthy diet should be based on whole, minimally-processed fresh foods, regardless of whether it is low- or hi-carb, then I am in full agreement. But alas, that does not appear to be what she is saying at all. Brody proceeds to denigrate the whole low-carb concept, beginning her attack with a misleading interpretation of a recent study that appeared in the January 26 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine:

"As a recent 12-week study of 34 men and women in their 60's so clearly demonstrated, those who consumed, without caloric restrictions, a diet high in fiber-rich carbohydrates (63 percent of calories, with 26 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories), low in fat (18 percent of calories) and moderate in protein lost more weight and a higher percentage of body fat than did those who ate the same number of calories of a typical American diet, that is, one high in fat (41 percent of calories) and relatively low in carbs (45 percent of calories).

The study showed that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet could result in weight loss and reduced body fat while preserving muscle mass, even without any change in caloric intake, as long as the carbs were low in added sugars and refined starches. And the weight is lost without having to avoid delicious, health-promoting fruits and instead eating lots of fiber-free and fat-laden eggs, cheese and meats.

How can this happen? It happens because fiber-rich carbohydrates offer three major benefits to the weight-conscious eater: they hold water in the gut, take longer to digest and some of their calories are eliminated unabsorbed. In other words, they can fill you up before they fill you out."

I have to wonder if Brody even read the full-text of the study, or simply relied on the highly-misleading press-releases sent out by the study's authors; if she did the former, she would have discovered that the study participants in the high-carbohydrate groups actually consumed about 400-600 calories less per day than those in the control group! Over the 12-week period of the study, the high-carbohydrate subjects consumed around 33,000 to 50,000 calories less than the average subject in the control group.(Hays NP) It's no surprise that they lost more weight!

Sure, eating fiber-rich, starchy-carbohydrates can increase satiety, and consequently reduce calorie intake, when compared to the calorie-dense junk that dominates the average American diet; a number of studies have already attested to this. However, in order to increase satiety and reduce one's calorie intake, one does not need to suffer the anti-social consequences of turning one's intestines into a methane-production plant by eating a diet high in whole-grains and legumes! Numerous studies have found that subjects placed on low-carb diets, who are told to restrict carbs but to eat protein and fat without limit, unintentionally reduce their total calorie intake to the same levels seen among dieters explicitly instructed to limit their overall calorie intake!(Brehm B)(Foster GD)(Samaha FF)(Yudkin J)(Westman E)(Westman EC)

The control diet by the way, with a 45% carbohydrate content, was in no way a low-carb diet. Brody skirts around this issue by labelling it as "relatively" low in carbs, but she could have cited the numerous studies that have indeed compared truly low-carb and high-carb diets for fat loss. The overwhelming majority have found either greater weight loss or no statistically significant difference in weight loss between low- and high-carb dieters.(Rabast, et al. 1981)(Baron JA, et al. 1986)(Wadden TA. 1993)(Foreyt et al. 1993)(Alford BB, et al. 1990)(Golay A, et al. 1996, 1996)(Lean et al. 1997)(Torbay et al. 2002)(Sondike et al. 2003)(Volek et al. 2002)(Fleming RM. 2002)(Brehm et al. 2003)(Foster et al. 2003)(Samaha et al. 2003)(Wien et al. 2003) Only one study has ever found greater weight loss on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, and that study just happened to be authored by Richard Fleming, the Nebraska cardiologist and avowed low-carb hater who is currently in doggy-doo over his shonky acquisition of the late Dr. Atkins' death report. I have already explained at length why Fleming's study is a highly questionable piece of literature.

"How many people know, for example, that one pound of uncooked pasta is meant to serve eight — yes, eight, not four or two — people? And how many examined the nutrition facts label on fat-free cakes and realized that a serving was still the same size as the full-fat version, and that the calorie savings per serving was minimal?"

Jane, the blame for the rise in calorie-intake that has occurred over the last thirty years can be placed squarely at the feet of the low-fat movement, whose voluminous anti-fat propaganda led us to believe that, when it came to diet, fat-restriction was the be-all-and-end-all of weight loss. Oh sure, low-fat advocates are now complaining that that was never the intention, that people should have realized that they needed to cut fat intake and total calorie intake in order to lose weight. Maybe the low-fat establishment should have given that a little more thought before enthusiastically embracing and giving "heart-healthy" ticks to high-carbohydrate, fat-free garbage (like the fat-free cake Brody attempts to apologize for); garbage that possesses low satiety value and creates rapid surges in blood sugar, followed by hypoglycemic lows that send dieters running straight back to the pantry for another blood glucose-raising carb-fix.

"A diet high in fat and low in carbs has yet to be tested for long-term safety and effectiveness."

You've got to be joking! High-fat, low-carb diets - comprised of freshly-killed meats, and gathered non-cereal plant foods (nuts, fruits, vegetables) - have been subjected to the longest trial ever known: human evolution. This ongoing trial has so far lasted 2.5 million years, most of which has been spent on what is known as the paleolithic or hunter-gatherer diet. Depending on geographical location, this diet varied from high-carb, low-fat to high-fat, very-low-carb. Low-carb, high-fat diets tended to predominate in colder regions far from the equator, where edible vegetation was far less abundant than in tropical regions. Radioisotope analyses of paleolithic skeletal remains - which tend to be far more robust than those of modern humans - show that meat comprised a significant portion of our ancestors' diets. Depending on the stage of evolution, at least a portion of the earth's inhabitants subsisted on a low-carb, high-fat diet; in colder eras, such as the Ice Age, paleontologists believe that the majority of the population was, by necessity, consuming low-carb diets. Despite the politically-incorrect eating habits that humankind kept throughout much of its evolutionary history, humans have out-survived many other species that have long since been rendered extinct. And we did it all without fat-free cakes, white rice, pasta, or non-fat milk, Jane!

"What do I and my slender friends eat? Mostly — but not exclusively — whole grain breads and cereals; lots of vegetables, salads and fresh and dried fruits; poultry, fish, meat and dried beans and peas and skim milk. But we also eat mostly white rice and pasta, potatoes, winter squash, avocados, regular cheese, eggs, cookies and ice cream and an occasional piece of cake or pie."

Well Jane, I'm glad it works for you. The unfortunate reality is that countless other folks have tried a similar approach, and failed dismally to achieve their health and/or weight loss goals. I'm one of them. Throughout most of the nineties, I followed a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, based on so-called "healthy" complex carbohydrates like whole-grain breads, rice, rolled oats, sweet potato, and ate only the leanest meats I could find. As anyone who knew me back then could attest, I followed this diet religiously, so it wasn't my lack of willpower or discipline that failed me - it was the diet. After several years of eating a diet that I now realize humans were never designed to eat, my blood pressure had risen, my blood sugar metabolism had gone to hell, and I developed a rather impressive array of food sensitivities.

If readers are thinking that maybe I was just unlucky and an isolated case, they would do well to read Beyond Pritikin by Louise Ann Gittleman. Gittleman used to be a Director of Nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center, and for years she counselled people to follow the low-fat, high-carbohydrate, grain- and legume-based diet espoused by the late Nathan Pritikin. She left after seeing how the diet was continually failing people. She observed significant improvements when people first began the Pritikin program, but noticed during their follow-up visits that many patients were experiencing weight regain, fatigue, ravenous hunger and food sensitivities. What sort of dietary regimen does Gittleman recommend nowadays? A low-carb diet for weight-loss, and a moderate-carbohydrate diet for weight-maintenance!

"The second and equally critical factor in our ability to keep our weight down is regular physical exercise. I mean regular. We walk briskly for an hour each morning and, in addition, I swim three-fourths of a mile nearly every day. My friends and I walk to and from appointments where most other Americans would ride, and I do most of my shopping on foot or bicycle. And, I assure you, none of us view this as a life of deprivation and self-denial."

Ah, now you're talking, Jane! Ladies and gentleman, no matter what diet you follow, physical activity should be a regular part of your schedule. However, while exercise has been shown to at least partially counter some of the hyperglycemic and hyperinsulinemic effects of a high carbohydrate diet, it's no guarantee of protection, as running enthusiasts Jim Fixx and, more recently, Brian Maxwell unfortunately found out. Indeed, intense daily workouts did little to stop the deleterious effects of my own copious complex carbohydrate ingestion.

Upholding The Tradition

I'm hardly the first person to highlight the nutritional nonsense emanating from Brody's NYT column. Back in 1991, Dr. Russell L. Smith pointed out a number of Brody Bloopers in his outstanding tome, The Cholesterol Conspiracy, including the following from her November 15, 1986 column: "It is not advisable to consume large amounts of polyunsaturated fats because, while they lower the damaging LDL and VLDL cholesterol in the blood, they also reduce the protective HDL cholesterol." Less than a month later (December 10, 1986), Brody was reportedly telling readers that "Experts recommend substituting unsaturated liquid vegetable oils (corn, safflower, sunflower, soybean [all rich in polyunsaturates] and olive oils, for example) for saturated fats. Unsaturated fats help to lower cholesterol levels in the blood."(Smith RL)

Smith went on to quote a few more contradictory Brody-Bytes; "A problem results from overconsumption of polyunsaturates, which can interfere broadly with immune responses. Too much total fat, particularly too many polyunsaturates, can also promote the growth of cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate...a wise consumer would stick to a low-fat diet and keep consumption of polyunsaturates to a minimum level." These words were printed in the NYT on March 11, 1987; four days later, Smith reports, Brody authored an article in Family Circle advising readers that: "Polyunsaturated fats help lower cholesterol levels in the blood and, thus, offer protection against heart disease ... you'll want to look for a margarine that lists a higher proportion of polyunsaturates than saturates." Then in the October-November 1988 issue of Modern Maturity, Brody reportedly told readers to: "Try and use as little fat as possible and, when fat is added, primarily use vegetable oils such as olive, corn oil and safflower oil, and margarine."

Brody complained in a 1986 column, "the dozens of letters I have received in response to recent columns on fats and cholesterol in foods indicated that many readers remain uncertain about how to choose a heart-healthy menu." No kidding! If I relied on Brody's columns for dietary advice, I'd be pretty damn perplexed too!

More recently, nutritionist Sally Fallon and biochemist Mary G. Enig, PhD, were driven to write a letter to the editor of NYT (which remains unpublished, but can nonetheless be read here) after reading some rather remarkable claims in Brody's July 15, 2003 column (Cholesterol: When It’s Good, It’s Very, Very Good).

Wrote Fallon and Enig:

"According to Jane E. Brody, your nutrition “expert,” the human anatomy “more closely resembles herbivores like cows and deer, strict vegetarians consuming only plant-based foods”... If this is the best the New York Times can do, the public is in serious trouble. Even school children know that the human digestive tract is completely different from that of ruminants like cows and deer, which have multiple stomachs, do not produce hydrochloric acid and have extremely long intestines compared to humans. The human digestive tract is much more like that of a dog than any herbivorous animal. If Brody is so wrong on this elementary fact, how can we trust anything else she says, including the merits of the plant-based diet she espouses? The Times is just emerging from the scandal of a journalist who made up news reports, but in your health section your most prominent health writer is still passing off falsehoods as fact."

That someone like Brody can have her Keystone Cop-like nutritional bloopers published in a major paper like the New York Times is a sad, sad indictment on the pitifully low standards that most media outlets demand of the nutritional information that graces their pages. As Dr. Smith wrote back in 1991:

"It is unfortunate for the American people that they have been and continue to be influenced by columnists who claim to be authorities but who are, in fact, not experts at all but purveyors of a montage of contradictory and inconsistent nonsense."

Smith's words are even more relevant today than they were back in '91, given the increasingly desperate behavior of low-fat proponents. As recent events have shown, these folks are not above misquoting studies and even telling outright lies in their attempt to suppress the rapidly rising popularity of low-carb nutrition (for recent examples of some rather bizzarre and misleading behavior by so-called low-fat experts, click here, and here).

References

Hays NP, et al. Effects of an Ad Libitum Low-Fat, High-Carbohydrate Diet on Body Weight, Body Composition, and Fat Distribution in Older Men and Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2004; 164: 210-217.

Brehm B, et al. A randomized trial comparing a very low carbohydrate diet and a calorie-restricted low fat diet on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors in healthy women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2003; 88 (4): 1617-1623.

Foster GD, et al. A randomized trial of a low-carbohydrate diet for obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, May 22, 2003; 348: 2082-2090.

Samaha FF, et al. A low-carbohydrate diet as compared with a low fat diet in severe obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, May 22, 2003; 348: 2074-2081.

Yudkin J, Carey M. The treatment of obesity by the "high fat" diet: the inevitability of calories. Lancet, Oct 29, 1960; 2; 939-941.

Westman EC, et al. Effect of 6-month adherence to a very low carbohydrate diet program. American Journal of Medicine, Jul, 2002; 113 (1): 30-36.

Rabast U, et al. Loss of weight, sodium and water in obese persons consuming a high or low carbohydrate diet. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 1981; 25: 341-349.

Baron JA, et al. A randomized controlled trial of low carbohydrate and low fat/high fiber diets for weight loss. American Journal of Public Health, 1986; 76 (11): 1293-1296.

Wadden TA. Treatment of obesity by moderate and severe caloric restriction. Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct. 1993; 119 (7, Pt. 2): 688-693.

Foreyt JP, Goodrick GK. Evidence for success of behavior modification in weight loss and control. Annals of Internal Medicine, Oct. 1993; 119 (7, Pt. 2): 698-701.

Alford BB, et al. The effects of variations in carbohydrate, protein, and fat content of the diet upon weight loss, blood values, and nutrient intake of adult obese women. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1990; 90: 534-540.

Golay A, et al. Weight-Loss With Low or High Carbohydrate Diet? International Journal of Obesity, 1996; 20 (12): 1067-1072.

Golay A, et al. Similar weight loss with low- or high carbohydrate diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1996; 63: 174-178.

Lean ME, et al. Weight loss with high and low carbohydrate 1200 kcal diets in free living women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Apr. 1997; 51 (4): 243-248.

Torbay N, et al. High protein vs high carbohydrate hypoenergetic diet in treatment of obese normoinsulinemic and hyperinsulinemic subjects. Nutrition Research, May 2002; 22 (5): 587-598.

Sondike SB, et al. Effects of a low-carbohydrate diet on weight loss and cardiovascular risk factors in overweight adolescents. Journal of Pediatrics, March 2003; 142: 253-258.

Volek JS, et al. Body composition and hormonal responses to a carbohydrate-restricted diet. Metabolism, July 2002; 51 (7): 864-870.

Fleming RM. The Effect of High-, Moderate-, and Low-Fat Diets on Weight Loss and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors. Preventive Cardiology, 2002; 5 (3): 110-118.

Brehm, et al. A randomized trial comparing a very low carbohydrate diet and a calorie-restricted low fat diet on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors in healthy women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2003; 88 (4): 1617-1623.

Foster GD, et al. A randomized trial of a low-carbohydrate diet for obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, May 22, 2003; 348: 2082-2090.

Samaha FF, et al. A low-carbohydrate diet as compared with a low fat diet in severe obesity. New England Journal of Medicine, May 22, 2003; 348: 2074-2081.

Wien MA, et al. Almonds vs complex carbohydrates in a weight reduction program. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, Nov 2003; 27 (11): 1365-1372.

Smith RL. The Cholesterol Conspiracy. Warren H. Green, June 1991.

Source: The Omnivore

Medical reporting "misleading"

Journalists have come under fire from US doctors, who say media coverage of medical research may exaggerate results, leading to confusion among the public.

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Drs Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical School, in New Hampshire, say that some medical press releases may exaggerate the perceived importance of findings and do not routinely highlight study limitations.

In addition, reporters give unwarranted coverage of incomplete research presentations at scientific meetings, they say. The effect is to give the public "undue hope or anxiety", and in some cases may cause people to "seek unproved, useless or even dangerous tests and treatments".

Drs Woloshin and Schwartz examined the medical press release process at several high-profile medical journals, including the British Medical Journal, JAMA and Circulation. Press releases are perhaps the most direct way that journals communicate with the media, they say.

A study of 127 press releases found that only 23 per cent noted study limitations, while 58 per cent noted differences between study groups. Industry funding was noted in only 22 per cent of the studies receiving such funding.

"The public and many physicians often learn about new medical research through the news media rather than medical journals. We think that journals can and should do more to enhance the quality of medical reporting," the team write.

Researchers also criticise press coverage of research findings presented at scientific meetings as "too much, too soon".

"Scientific meetings are intended to provide a forum for researchers to present new work to colleagues; the work presented may be preliminary and may have undergone only limited peer review," say the doctors.

But results are frequently presented to the public as scientifically sound evidence rather than preliminary findings of still uncertain validity. This coverage is concerning since a substantial number of the studies remain unpublished, avoiding scrutiny by the scientific community.

"Press coverage at this early stage may leave the public with the false impression that the data are in fact mature, the methods valid, and the findings widely accepted," say the researchers.

The team say that reporters should emphasise the preliminary nature of information presented, while scientists presenting work should emphasise the limitations of their work when being interviewed by the media.

© Health Media Ltd 2002