Atkins Attack

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109890,00.html

Atkins Attack

By Steven Milloy

Already-confused dieters are no doubt reeling from reports this week
of a new study linking a high-carbohydrate diet with weight loss.

Rather than well-conducted scientific research, though, the new study
appears to be merely a junk science-fueled attack by government
nannies on politically incorrect low-carbohydrate regimens like the
Atkins Diet (search).

"In the midst of the low-carb craze, a new study suggests that by
eating lots of carbohydrates and little fat, it is possible to lose
weight without actually cutting calories - and without
exercising, either," reported The Associated Press this week.

"Revenge of the High-Carb Diet - Ha! It Works, Too" was the
Reuters headline.

But unlike the sensationalistic media, which tend to limit their
reporting of new study claims to regurgitated press releases and sound
bites from study authors, I actually read the study in the Jan. 26
issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

It didn't take long to discover why study subjects on the
high-carbohydrate diet lost weight - they ate fewer calories!

The researchers divided the 34 study subjects into three groups: a
control group of 12 individuals who consumed a low-carbohydrate diet
(search); a group of 11 individuals who consumed a high-carbohydrate
diet; and a group of 11 individuals who consumed a high-carbohydrate
diet and did aerobic exercise.

Study subjects were provided with foods constituting 150 percent of
their required daily caloric intake and instructed to eat as much as
they wanted. Carbohydrates constituted 45 percent of the control
groups' calories and about 62 percent for the high-carbohydrate
groups.

After 12 weeks, the study subjects on the control diet weighed the
same as when the study started. But study subjects on the
high-carbohydrate diet lost weight: about five pounds on average for
those in the high-carbohydrate-only group and about 10 pounds for
those in the high-carbohydrate-plus-exercise group.

To the study authors and media, these superficial "results" apparently
prove that you can lose weight while eating as many carbohydrates as
you like - and you don't even have to exercise.

It might be a couch potato's fantasy come true - except that the
study details tell a different story.

As it turns out, study subjects in the high-carbohydrate groups
consumed about 400-600 calories less per day than those in the control
group. Over the 12-week period of the study, then, the average study
subject in the high-carbohydrate group consumed about 42,000 calories
less than the average study subject in the control group.

Since a pound of fat represents about 3,500 calories, it's no wonder
why those in the high-carbohydrate group lost weight. It was because
they ate less, not because of any magical effects of a
high-carbohydrate diet.

Although the media's apparent lack of interest in examining the actual
study data is disappointing, the inaccurate description of the study
to the media by lead author William J. Evans of the University of
Arkansas for Medical Sciences is even more dismaying.

He told Reuters that the study subjects ate "around 2,500 calories per
day," thereby implying that the only difference in their diets was the
amount of carbohydrates. That's just plain misleading.

Control group subjects averaged 2,825 calories per day during the
12-week study; high-carbohydrate group subjects averaged 2250 calories
per day and high-carbohydrate-plus-exercise subjects averaged 2,413
calories.

Such variation over 12 weeks adds up to significant differences in
total caloric intake and is most likely what produced the observed
weight loss in the high-carbohydrate groups.

The study authors then had the audacity to slam low-carbohydrate
diets, such as the Atkins diet, as a means to lose weight.

"Little evidence exists to support this idea," wrote the study
authors.

But it appears that there's not even that much evidence in favor of
their all-the-carbs-you-can-eat idea.

It's no secret that nutrition nannies in the federal government oppose
high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets like the Atkins plan ― not
because such diets don't work but because their fat-is-OK approach
contradicts the nannies' low-fat dietary prescriptions of the last 30
years. (The irony of course is that obesity has supposedly skyrocketed
while America went low-fat.)

Evans and his group, not surprisingly, were funded by the National
Institutes of Health, a government group that claims in bold-face on
its Web site that "[High-protein/low-carb diets are] not a healthy way
to lose weight!"

That may or may not be true. Much more research is needed. Hopefully
that research won't be conducted by biased, government-funded research
hacks.


Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar
at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo:
Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).