The Atkins diet is under fire from all sides this week, it seems. Mayor Bloomberg chose to question the honesty of the some his own state's M.E.s by suggesting that Dr. Atkins actually died from his diet instead of a blow to the head from falling on an icy sidewalk. Veronica Atkins is demanding a public apology. Last time I saw Bloomberg on TV (New Year's Eve), he looked like he could use a bit of dieting himself.
Earlier in the week, the New York Times took it upon themselves to declare that Atkins had changed it's recommendations about the consumption of saturated fat. The Atkins folks are righteously pissed as they said nothing of the kind.
We are all faced with (and probably sick of) alarming articles about how Americans are so fat and our children are so fat and obesity is so expensive, and the British are so fat and yet a popular diet with many happy adherants is just not acceptable. Oh, and we need the government to impose regulation upon the food industry because it's not *our* fault that we're fat, of course.
Why the conflict? Because the media *needs* conflict. Tino predicts that there will soon be a media backlash against the anti-Atkins people. It will be real or imagined since it matters not which. Conflict is news and they need news. In any case, I wouldn't take a bet against Tino on this one.
The people who think they have all the answers have so much invested in being right that they seem to have forgotten that science is an ever-evolving thing. Human metabolism is, sadly, not as well understood as these folks would have you believe. If it were not so complex, we'd probably have more effective drug-based treatments or perhaps even gene therapy for obesity. Until the magic bullet arrives, we must all do it the hard way by changing diet and lifestyle.
Atkins is clearly an effective tool for some people, and certainly, the diabetes epidemic indicates that eating less sugar, trans-fat and highly processed grains is clearly a good thing for Americans. As I read all the smear campaigns against Atkins, it just reminds me that people who are that defensive often have the most to hide.
Posted by nicole at January 24, 2004 05:51 PM