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.

(Note: questions about TrustFlow here will be deleted, post them in trustmetrics.)

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

Ummm....

[ruis.livejournal.com]

Can you tell me which of those articles actually gives a scientifically sound reason why the Atkins Diet is a pile of dangerous pseudo-science.

Reading the first few it appears that they are using the tried and tested technique of fighting pseudo-science with pseudo-science.

Re: Ummm....

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

The BBC article refers to her saying we don't know about the long term effects and that some of the lo-carb claims are pseudoscience - fair enough. haven't seen anywhere stating that such things are dangerous, but then I don't read the Sun/Mail/Fallen Standard much.

Although I really don't understand this guy:
Lyndel Costain, a dietician, said people should not do the Atkin's diet or similar diets over the long term.
"The problems with that sort of diet is that it may be low in fibre.
"You might also restrict very important vitamins and minerals that you get in fruit and vegetables and wholegrains.

The main point of these lo-carb diets is the amount of fruit and veg involved! Which fill you up! And are full of fibre! These diets may have problems, but low fibre is not going to be one of them unless you have someone eating only meat and cheese, in which case they are likely to have heatlh problems (rather like the claims for vegetarian diets being really healthy which may be true but not if your veggie diet centers on pizza and egg'n'chips)

Re: Ummm....

[ruis.livejournal.com]

Yep. It strikes me as being a bit daft that people are willing to use articles that are obviously wrong on some very basic points to back up the claim that something else is wrong and unscientific.

Re: Ummm....

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I thought it best to link to the whole Google News thread on it rather than one article from it - I usually find that more informative. As I indicated, it's Dr Jebb's presentation on the subject I mean to highlight.