Pity poor frequent dieters. Just losing weight is hard enough.
Now they are caught in a food fight erupting in nutritionists’ offices, best-selling diet books and kitchens everywhere. At stake, both sides say, is the health of the nation.
For years the official word on healthy eating has been diets low in fat and rich in carbohydrates–fruits, vegetables and grain-based foods like pasta, cereals and breads. Eating that way, experts have said, controls weight, lowers blood fats that clog arteries and keeps bodies fit.
Now, claiming to know better, comes a small but vocal pack of rebel diet experts who say the establishment is all wrong. Americans, their best-selling books insist, would be slimmer and live longer if they ate more protein, plenty of fat and cut way back on the amount of carbohydrates.
Two trends focus attention on the challengers. First, most Americans are trying to do the right thing by their bodies: A survey by the Calorie Control Council found that 66 percent of us are watching our weight, with 27 percent on diets and 39 percent making a “serious” informal effort to control excess pounds.
Second, it’s not working: Americans are getting fatter. Federal health experts announced in June that 55 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, based on standards that lowered the bar. That adds up to 97 million adult Americans. Obesity among children is also climbing.
The cost in dollars and lives is enormous. Being overweight is a major risk factor in heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke, some cancers and arthritis. Adult-onset diabetes–an avoidable illness that exacerbates other maladies–is the No. 1 cause of adult blindness.
The traditional diet recommended by the American Dietetic Association, the American Heart Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is straightforward and makes sense: to be less fat, eat less fat.
That translates into a daily menu big on carbohydrates, the complex and simple sugars that provide energy to cells. There are no precise recommendations, but the usual advice is to eat a diet no more than 30 percent fat, about 55 percent carbohydrates and about 15 percent protein.
In the 1970s, the “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution” high-protein diet drew raves before fading under criticism that its very low-carbohydrate recommendations were unhealthy. Also, some complained that staying on the New York physician’s diet was too hard, and weight piled back on as soon as dieters resumed eating normally.
The new rebel diets target carbohydrates less ruthlessly. In 1995 Barry Sears, a research scientist, produced “The Zone,” arguing that too many carbohydrates doom Americans to obesity. The reason: sugars trigger insulin, which in turn tells the cells to store excess sugars as fat.
But protein and fat, Sears said, satisfy and quell hunger. According to the Zone diet, meals should be structured this way: 40 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent protein (double the official recommendation) and 30 percent fat. Good carbohydrates are vegetables and some fruits, especially ones rich in fiber–not bread. The Zone diet runs 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day.
Though painfully complex, “The Zone” and its sequel, “Mastering the Zone,” became best sellers. So did other anti-carbohydrate books that quickly followed: “Protein Power,” by medical doctors Michael and Mary Dan Eades, and “Sugar Busters,” by three doctors and a businessman in food-loving New Orleans.
All allow some alcohol, all stress protein, exercise and drinking water–six to eight glasses a day at least, or “until you float,” says Dr. Michael Eades, who practices in Boulder, Colo. Water helps eliminate ketones, by-products of fat breakdown usually burned by carbohydrates. Diets with no carbohydrates lead to a buildup in ketones that can be dangerous, experts agree.
The Eades diet, likened by its authors to “updated Atkins, only more balanced,” doesn’t count calories but can slash carbohydrates to a surprising 15 percent of total intake. “I used to be a little nervous about doing it at the beginning,” says Eades. “But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It works very, very, very quickly. You can go away and try this and in three weeks see a major difference.”
Critics of reduced-carbohydrate diets say they are fads, that weight lost in the first week or so is mostly water (because carbohydrates retain water). Some, but not all, think a diet of only 40 percent carbohydrates can put unhealthy pressure on the kidneys as they work harder to excrete ketones.
Calories, not carbohydrates, make us fat, says Dr. Wahida Karmally, director of the Irving Center for Clinical Research at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. Furthermore, she says, Americans already consume more protein than they need.
