Atkins Diet is dangerous pseudo-science

[ciphergoth]

The Atkins Diet is a pile of dangerous pseudo-science. Not that this comes as a surprise, but here's the word from Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Centre.

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Update: Post made friends-only. Thanks to babysimon for pointing out that vampwillow had invited people in atkins_uk to join the thread, resulting in some incredibly lunatic contributions. Update: Public again.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

So how do people like, say, natives of the Arctic who live almost entirely on meat (at least traditionally), stay healthy?
Is it because they eat nearly all of an animal, rather than just the bits Europeans typically butcher and serve with 2 veg?
(I don't dispute that cutting out big parts of your usual diet is a bad idea; I'm just wondering how people who have no choice about the all-meat diet cope)

[juliet]

How healthy *do* they actually stay? In particular, what's the average life expectancy? I'd expect in that sort of situation, life expectancy would be pretty low (for a number of reasons), so things like cholesterol problems would be unlikely to show up.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Well, yes. Point taken - typical life expectancy of natives of the high Arctic has never been -that- high.
So now I'd like to know: is the Atkins diet supposed to reduce your life expectancy below that typical of a hunter-gatherer in the northern Arctic, or just below that of our cosseted Western European existence?
You can still live OK in the medium term (years) on a diet of almost entirely fresh meat, but you can live OK for years on a lot of bad diets. Many sysadmins bear witness to this...

[paroxysmal.livejournal.com]

My little bit to add to this...

Eskimos live on an average of about 10 grams of carbohydrates per day, which is EXTREMELY low (Atkins starts you off on 20 a day in the intense Induction Phase), but their bodies convert the excess protein into glucose. They have a number of other adaptations like vascular something-or-other which increases the blood flow to their fingers and toes, and such. They also have a culture which is prone to high rates of suicides, and the nomadic tribes leave their elderly behind to die if they're slowing down the group... so there are other factors which contribute to their lowered life expectancy besides strictly diet. :)

[drreagan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the do eat more of the animal than generally western europeans do. They also have evlolved/adapted a metabolism that is somewhat more suited to that particular way of life over the past 10 thousand years.

[thegreenman.livejournal.com]

They have been genetically selected by their environment over thousands of years to tolerate a high protein/high fat diet (there was nothing else to eat).

Now that they have mostly ditched their hunter/gatherer lifestyle, switched to a more conventional north american lifetyle and diet and interbread with non local people they are seeing disease and mortality rates comparable to other Americans and Canadians.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

Also, fresh seal, fresh wild fish, and whatever other wild creatures they eat on the arctic may be healthier meat than the industrially-grown chicken and steak that we get. I wouldn't want to eat a high-meat diet myself for this more so than any other reason.

Pavlos

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

natives of the arctic need a diet that's higher in fat and cholesterol because (stating the bleeding obvious) IT'S COLD!

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

No...! :0

Pavlos