What a BS article

http://tinyurl.com/oewo


Anyone care to write the author email is at the bottom of the article


Snipit for the article:

The next day, I went to the grocery store and grabbed a cart. Usually
I was bored by shopping, but now I was filled with the fervor of
following a new system. On Atkins, you don't have to count calories or
read labels. You just cut an entire food group out of your diet. Carbs
were the enemy, and protein my friend. Smugly, I steered past cereal
boxes, bread and fruit and headed toward the chilly land of the meat
freezers.

The first thing I noticed was that the $15 I saved on the book was
quickly eaten up by my grocery bill. Meat is expensive. A $3 box of
cereal could feed me 10 times, while a $3 chicken breast fed me once.
Still, I loaded up on bacon, sausage, hot dogs, fish, tuna and
chicken. I also threw in extra butter and cheese, though without toast
or crackers, I wasn't sure what to put them on.

The first morning, I had eggs and bacon for breakfast. What a treat.
The second morning I had the same. By the third morning, I felt almost
sick. The breakfast felt greasy and heavy. I cut out the bacon and
struggled along with the eggs, which are not my favorite food.

For lunch, I ate chicken or tuna salad. For dinner, I had chicken or
steak or fish. In a way, the diet was easy. I knew exactly what I
could eat, and what I couldn't. In another way, it was extremely
difficult when it came to shopping and cooking. I was used to working
late, ordering in and cooking at odd hours. But now all the convenient
staples of my bachelorette's life were forbidden: mac and cheese, rice
and beans, Ramen noodles, pizza.

Not a happy camper

By the second day, I was crabby, hungry and exhausted. Snacking during
this first stage of Atkins is almost impossible. Even "good" snacks
like bananas or apples are taboo, since they contain carbohydrates in
the form of fructose. I found myself stopping at 7-11 for beef jerky
and those tasteless high-protein snack bars used by weightlifters.

Still, in four days I lost four pounds. I also became extremely
thirsty and began urinating a lot. Later, I learned that most of the
early pounds I lost were from water weight. According to Elizabeth
Babson, a dietitian at Barnert Hospital in Paterson, ketosis can lead
to dehydration, since you have to drink more water if you're
increasing your protein intake.

Still, I soldiered on, dutifully pulling burgers out of their buns and
tearing the breading off chicken nuggets. There is a romance to the
Atkins diet, a feeling that you're returning to a sort of primordial,
pre-industrial eating style that preceded our corrupt Mcworld of fast
food and corn syrup solids. Something about the diet struck a deep
chord in me: Human beings, after all, evolved about 100,000 years ago,
while agriculture only appeared about 10,000 years ago. For eons,
humans had been hunter-gatherers, though anthropologists argue about
how much of that diet consisted of meat, and how much of berries,
fruits and other foods.

The Atkins selling point is that you can eat as much as you want, but
only the permitted foods. Neverthless, I was constantly hungry for the
first week. The book said that if I felt hungry or weak, I should
simply eat more high-protein or high-fat foods. But this is easier
than it sounds. You can only eat so much meat and cheese. I added some
more vegetables to the diet, and felt better. Still, the burst of
energy that Atkins promised by the fourth or fifth day never arrived.
I was losing weight, but I suspected it was simply because I was
eating fewer calories, period.

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
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I sent an email to her and pointed out some her errors this is what I
got back:

Thank you for your comments. First, the article did note that I felt
better after adding more salad veggies to my induction diet. I did
read the entire book. I did not intend for the article to be
flippant. The article appeared in our feature section and was meant
to be a personal essay on my experience on the diet, with some recent
research included. It was not meant to be an exhaustive judgement on
the Atkins diet as a whole. This feature conveyed my experience on the
diet, which was unique to me. Because it was a feature, it could have
a more playful tone and structure than a straight news article. We
would welcome hearing about your views of the Atkins diet
and how it benefited you. You can write our editor at: Herald News, 1
Garret Mountain Plaza, PO Box 471, West Paterson, NJ, 07424-0471. Or
email a letter for publication to me, and I will forward it to the
"letters" editor. Or you may email him directly at



Sincerely

Carolyn Feibel
Health & Features Reporter
Herald News
One Garrett Mountain Plaza
PO Box 471
West Paterson, NJ 07424
(973) 569-7131

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
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Thanks for posting this Rage. I am glad you told her where she went
wrong. What a ding-dong.

Did you write a letter to the editor? I think the public would benefit
an informed well written counter point.

Thanks!

On 25 Sep 2003 07:10:25 -0700, (Pamsta) wrote:

Thanks for posting this Rage. I am glad you told her where she went
wrong. What a ding-dong.

Did you write a letter to the editor? I think the public would benefit
an informed well written counter point.

Thanks!


I am trying to.. I have to find the time to sit down and write
something......
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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
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