The Atkins Study: Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

For years, critics of the Atkins diet argued that if anyone ever conducted a study that pitted Atkins head to head with other, more 'healthy' diets, it would prove beyond a doubt that the Atkins regimen of low carbs and high protein (and fat) will kill you deader than a doornail. Raise your cholesterol through the roof. Send your blood pressure soaring, and send you to that big fat farm in the sky.

But a funny thing happened on the way to scientific certainty. Someone finally conducted such a study, and it proved the exact opposite - that Atkins is safe and healthy.

So are the critics apologizing for years demonizing poor old Dr. Atkins? Years of nutritional dogma designed to convince Americans fat is fatal and low fat is the only way to go?

Nope. Instead, they have resorted to spin, claiming that this new study simply proves that all diets are lousy and that it's really, really hard to lose weight and keep it off.

Both of those claims are true, I suppose. But they miss the huge, glaring point that we should be taking from this startling new research.

The study in question, published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical association, took a group of overweight women and randomly assigned them one of four diets: Atkins, The Zone, Dean Ornish's low fat diet, and the government's pyramid diet.

To answer charges that a few previous studies (which also seemed to exonerate Atkins) were too small, researchers enrolled hundreds of women, instead of a few dozen. To answer charges that previous studies only followed people for a few months, researchers followed these subjects for a whole year.

The results? Women on Atkins lost more weight than women on the other three diets. But far more significant, their blood pressure was lower - and their cholesterol numbers were better!

The anti-Atkins pundits immediately weighed in. The people on Atkins didn't lose THAT much more weight, they said. Their blood pressure wasn't THAT much lower. Their cholesterol wasn't THAT much better. And hey, everybody on all the diets started to gain back weight near the end. Which proves that all diets are imperfect, right?

Well, yes. But such back peddling misses the huge point.

According to those same critics, Atkins was not merely supposed to give you slightly lower weight and slightly better blood work. It was supposed to kill you. It was madness, they said. A one-way ticket to an early grave.

The longstanding vindictiveness, hostility, even hatred of the late Dr. Atkins by the mainstream nutritional establishment was always a bit unseemly. And when Dr. Atkins countered with countless stories of success, the reply was always the same: Where are the studies? Give us studies!

Now there is this and several other studies vindicating Atkins. So where are the mea culpas, the humble apologies, the admissions of fallibility?

The fact that we're not hearing such admissions from nutritionists raises troubling questions about public science in general, and nutrition in particular.

People who are skeptical about science - and I'm generally not one - argue that science often throws a patina of 'authority' over what are, in effect, moral positions. For example, the moral position that fruits, vegetables and grains are inherently healthy and virtuous, and that a greasy cheeseburger (without the bun!) is inherently evil and unhealthy. Anti-science skeptics argue that public science often skews its results to support such moral prejudices, then feeds those results to the public as unassailable facts bathed in authority.

Scientists counter that, no, we don't work that way. We follow the facts. We do studies, weigh evidence. We don't let our prejudices intervene, especially when it comes to public recommendations about critical matters like health.

In the case of the Atkins diet, however, the skeptics clearly have a point.

For one thing, these new studies could have been done decades ago. Why weren't they? Because mainstream nutritionists were so sure that Atkins was a death sentence that there was simply no need to test it. The inherent evil of a fatty cheeseburger evil was self-evident.

And now, in the face of this evidence to the contrary, there is really only one 'scientific' response, and unfortunately we're not hearing it.

That response ought to be: "Wow. We were wrong and Dr. Atkins was right. There are clearly aspects of weight, blood pressure and cholesterol that we totally misunderstood. We need to do more work. And in the meantime, the evidence now suggests that Atkins is, at the very least, as safe, healthy and effective as other diets."

The fact that we are not hearing such affirmations, and instead hearing spin about how this new study simply proves that all diets are tough, lends powerful support to the anti-science skeptics. It indicates that in the case of Atkins, mainstream nutrition is deeply reluctant to follow the research if it flies in the face of long-established dogma.

That's too bad. Obesity, stroke and heart disease and the biggest killers of Americans, by far. People are crying out for remedies based on solid evidence, and they need to trust those providing the evidence.

Until the professional demonizers of Dr. Atkins are able to make the clear, unequivocal statement "we're sorry - were wrong," they invite suspicion that mainstream nutrition is a bunch of baloney. And that can't be good - even without the bun.