Experts Debate the Mystery Behind the Atkins Diet
An outspoken critic of the Atkins diet -- Harvard researcher George Blackburn, MD, PhD -- says the studies offer the first hard, scientific evidence to disprove the theory behind the diet.
Blackburn doesn't deny that Atkins followers lose weight, but "you get no points for weight loss -- only for keeping it off. Very few people can stay on this diet beyond a few days or weeks," he says. Although Blackburn currently is involved in Atkins diet research -- some of which Robert Atkins, MD, helps pay for -- he was not involved in the studies reported at this conference.
First introduced in the 1970s, the Atkins diet makes carbohydrates taboo -- breads, cereals, rice, pasta, fruits, and vegetables. The idea is to change the body's metabolism by making it get most of its fuel not from carbohydrates, as is normal, but from protein and fat. This leads to an altered state called ketosis. The theory behind the diet is that the body loses weight more efficiently when forced into a state of ketosis. One reason for this may simply be that ketosis makes a person lose his or her appetite.
To test this theory, Bernard V. Miller, MD, and colleagues at The Research Institute and Clinical Pharmacology Research Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., intensively studied nine men and nine women who agreed to follow the Atkins diet. All of the men and six of the women were medically diagnosed as obese, and the three remaining women were overweight.
As expected, all subjects went into a state of ketosis each day they stayed on the diet. And they lost weight -- nearly 12 pounds, on average. But when Miller and co-workers looked at the number of calories consumed, they discovered that the Atkins dieters were taking in far fewer calories than they did before starting the diet.