The Atkins Diet

- Roger Mason

     

Who is the most popular diet author in the history of the world? Far and away it is Robert Atkins who has been writing books for over thirty years now on high fat, low carbohydrate diets. In person it is painfully obvious that Atkins himself is a sickly man and a victim of his own advice.

And his advice is- believe it or not- to eat all the meat and fat you want to. That's right - eat literally endless amounts of prime, rib, pork chops, sirloin steaks, lamb chops, eggs fried in butter, cheeseburgers (but hold the bun!), spare ribs and any other meats and dairy products you want. He actually suggests eating, "70% fat and meat". He says this will not raise your cholesterol, certainly won't cause heart attacks, won't contribute to prostate cancer or any of those other "myths" you've been told. If you eat all this meat and fat your excess weight will just roll right off your body like rain off a duck's back. Oh, yes, you can eat all the fatty duck, goose, turkey and fried chicken you want to. To his credit he says never to eat the hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats that are so ubiquitous in our modern foods today. He also says to stop eating so much sugar and sweets and he is very correct there. But he calls sugar "carbohydrate" and technically it is. The line blurs when he calls brown rice, whole grain bread, oatmeal, buckwheat, whole wheat pasta and beans in general "carbohydrate" as well. To him it's all the same- white sugar or brown rice, honey or whole grain bread, fructose or oatmeal.

Sugar, honey, molasses, fructose, maple syrup, etc. are, in fact, simple carbohydrates and Americans eat more than 125 pounds apiece of these sweeteners every year. This is a major cause of our stratospheric disease rate certainly.

Complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole wheat, rye, oats, corn, barley, millet as well as all beans (pinto, black, navy, red, pink, lentils, kidney, garbanzo, northern, etc.) are literally the staff of life and should be the basis or our daily food intake. Nothing is better for you than whole grains and beans as the main part of the food you eat every day.

To go on a diet of all meat and fat with a few vegetables added as an afterthought is a guaranteed road to all the diseases we know and an early demise. Americans already eat more than 40% fat calories with most of them saturated animal fats. To suggest that people eat even more is incomprehensible. The ideal is to eat no more than 10 to 20% fat calories with most of them coming from plants.

And to tell people not to eat whole, complex carbohydrates like brown rice, whole wheat and corn is to take away the most important of all sources of our nutrition.

This is literally the most popular diet in America. So, why are otherwise intelligent people going on such an irrational, illogical diet like this? Because, it has more to do with psychology than intelligence. People love to eat rich, fatty, calorie laden foods especially cholesterol rich animal foods because it is very comforting. Atkins simply came along and told people what they wanted to hear. People generally don't want to do what is best; they want to do what they LIKE. And they like to eat rich fatty foods and lots of meat. Atkins gives them endless rationalizations, excuses and pseudo-arguments to do just that.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that the Atkins Diet is exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want to do to be healthy, well, fit and live a long time.