Vegans vs. Atkins

Animal-rights activists claim that low-carb, meat-heavy diets are killing people. Are they raising legitimate health concerns -- or are they just rabid anti-carnivores?

Dec. 8, 2003 | For all the deals with the devil made in Washington, it's not often they're owned up to at the National Press Club, before a roomful of reporters, armed with notepads, tape recorders and TV cameras.

But Jody Gorran, a businessman from Delray Beach, Fla., announced at a press conference on Nov. 20, 2003, "I made a Faustian bargain with the devil."

The trim 53-year-old's dark deal: "I traded a 32-inch waist for heart disease, and the devil was the Atkins diet."

Gorran testified that he had a heart scan six months before going on Atkins that showed no problems. But after two and a half years of losing weight and keeping it off on the high-protein, low-carb diet, while boasting about its incredible benefits to everyone he knew -- eat fat, while you lose the fat! -- he developed heart disease. Suffering from severe artery blockage, he underwent angioplasty to place a stent in his coronary artery.

Gorran shared the podium at the press conference with other self-proclaimed victims of the diet and their aggrieved family members: a 51-year-old hairstylist whose cholesterol went from 160 to 258, suffered kidney stones and had to have surgery to remove her gall bladder; the parents of an overweight 16-year-old from Sturgeon, Mo., who dropped dead from cardio-respiratory arrest at school while suffering from low levels of calcium and potassium in the first days of the diet; the sister of a 41-year-old man from Yardville, N.J., who also died of a heart attack while low carbing.

The master of ceremonies at this media circus of misery was Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit that promotes the health benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, and advocates against the use of animals in medical testing and in the training of medical students. As an advocate of "plant-based" diets, Barnard has written several books, including most recently "Breaking the Food Seduction" (St. Martin's, 2003), in which Chapter 4, "Opiates on a Cracker: The Cheese Seduction," asks, "Is cheese a drug?" Oozing with recipes for oven-barbequed tofu steaks and tempeh tostadas, the book also advises dieters how to best fend off "party platters and other torture devices."

Barnard may have considered Atkins, an eat-the-hamburger, not-the-bun approach to weight loss, a bad idea long before his group set up an online registry to record consumer complaints about it. But for vegans and animal-rights activists, for whom meat is as bad ideologically as they believe it is physically, the ever-rising profile of low-carb diets is a major public-relations setback. There may be no consensus on the healthiness of low-carb diets, but there is no denying their increasing popularity.

Meat is back! The magic words "low-carb" are popping up in beer commercials and Weight Watchers products. So clearly, something needed to be done. After a year of soliciting reports from low-carb dieters suffering from everything from gout to bad breath, PCRM collected 188 responses to its informal online survey, and decided to call the press conference to highlight the most heinous among them.

While stressing that the self-reported responses of a self-selected audience on a Web quiz do not constitute a scientific study, Barnard believes that his group has now amassed enough preliminary evidence to justify calling for further research by the feds. "We are asking the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] to go from indictment to conviction," he said at the press conference. "We are calling on the CDC to try to lure Americans away from its honeymoon with the diet that has made its reputation from the fact that it's so counterintuitive -- eat the worst possible food, and lose weight."

As news outlets gobbled up the story -- "Low-Carb, High-Protein Diets Can Be Deadly" and "Doctors Blast Atkins Diet" -- the "Atkins machine," as Barnard refers to the company that's sold millions of diet books, nutritional supplements and low-carb food products to the protein-hungry masses, blasted back. Atkins Health and Medical Information Services issued a statement defending the safety of its diet, and accusing PCRM of seeking to "further its own vegan political and philosophical agenda," while exploiting the "obesity and diabetes crisis in this country."

Was Barnard's press conference less about concern for the health and nutrition of overweight Americans looking to shed those extra 10 or 50 or 150 pounds, than it was about the concern for the beef and pork likely to be consumed by their hungry mouths on a high-protein diet? Had Jody Gorran, the Floridian who'd become convinced that the miracle diet he'd talked up to his family and friends had given him heart disease, just traded one deal with the devil for another? The plot thickens the closer you look -- the only thing for sure is that low-carb diets are becoming a major player in the fight for hearts and minds in a culture-wide struggle over the propriety of eating meat.

"All of us at Atkins are deeply disturbed by PCRM's shameless exploitation of people who have struggled through personal tragedies," the Atkins press release said. "There is no logic and no science to support any association between these individuals and the ANA [Atkins Nutritional Approach], no more and no less than there is logic or science to support an association between the thousands of people who die from heart disease or kidney failure while following a low-fat diet."

In other words: With millions of people on a diet, some of them are going to get sick, and even die, especially if they're already likely to be suffering from the health risks associated with obesity. Should the Atkins diet be made to answer for the sins of the obesity epidemic, when all they're trying to do is help free people from the prison of their extra layers of fat? In short: Don't look at us.

Dr. Stuart Trager, chair of the Atkins Physicians Council, went further, criticizing the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in an "open letter" for eschewing the scientific method, and instead going straight to the TV cameras with its anecdotal evidence that low-carb dieting can kill: "This group of radical vegans and animal rights advocates abusing their medical degrees and masquerading as concerned and 'responsible' physicians must be held to the same standards that all scientists must adhere to, and to cease this practice of sensationalism."

In his letter, Trager cited the research of Dr. Eric Westman at Duke University, which unexpectedly found that cholesterol levels fell on the first six months on the diet, as one example of credible scientific work on the Atkins plan. But Trager conveniently failed to mention that Westman himself had said in a statement upon the publication of his research: "While we're impressed with the weight loss of this diet, we still are not sure about the safety of it. More studies need to be done in order to be confident about the long-term safety of this type of diet."

In turn, Barnard questioned the august credibility of a group of doctors paid to defend a lucrative diet plan. "I understand that they have to say that it's safe because they have a $100 million empire based on that, but the only credible response is to investigate," he said in an interview, adding: "What credibility do the Atkins doctors have? They are paid to do research to sell books. If somebody paid by Atkins wants to questions anyone's credibility, first they should question their own."

But pro-Atkins advocates aren't the only critics of the PCRM press conference. There are others who question the wisdom of taking nutritional warnings about the dangers of eating meat from a press conference set up by a group that works against animal testing.

"They are committed advocates against use of animals in any way, shape, form or manner, so they're not objective," says Robert Baratz, an internist in private practice in Boston, who is president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a nonprofit that fights medical quackery. "And they are strongly allied with, if not a front organization for, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), but they don't let it be known that that's the case, and that's deceptive."

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, says that his organization has made some donations to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in the past to support "areas of mutual interest," and Barnard, who writes the "Dr. in the House" column for PETA's Animal Times magazine, has served as a medical advisor to the group. "But to suggest that there is anything else there is simply ludicrous."

Barnard says his group has a team of doctors and registered dieticians on staff, as well as about 5,000 doctors as members, and more than 100,000 other "supporting" members. And while he may agree with many of PETA's stances, he denies that he's the lab coat and stethoscope puppet for its animal-rights ideology: "I think that PETA has done a great job in many ways of encouraging people toward healthier diets," he says. "Your coronary arteries don't care why you stop eating meat. Having said that, we're not a front for them, or they for us."

The organization that has gone the furthest toward trying to smear PCRM as a bunch of unscientific PETA-sympathizers is the Center for Consumer Freedom, made up of paid flacks for the restaurant industry. The organization's strongly worded accusations about the group Barnard leads are one of the first things to come up after even the most cursory Google search.

But the Center for Consumer Freedom, which has received funding from Tyson Foods and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association among others, is hardly in a position to accuse other organizations of being front groups, says Laura Miller, associate editor of Prwatch.org, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, which has done investigative work on the organization and its founder.

"They're an interesting group because they illustrate how corporate money is funneled into these front groups that help confuse issues. They're hired P.R. hacks basically working for the industry to promote the industry's viewpoint. Their job is really to attack any organization or anyone who says that maybe Americans shouldn't eat so much meat."

So, if you can't trust the critics of a meat-happy diet, because they're vegetarians opposed to animal testing, and you can't trust the biggest critics of the vegetarians because they're funded by the meat industry, and you can't trust the doctors who are paid to defend a diet, then who should you listen to in this rancorous debate?

The Atkins camp has long viewed mainstream nutritionist putdowns of its diet with suspicion, but some specialists without any direct ties to the health industry or the "plant-based diet" promoters, are adamant that the Atkins diet simply isn't well-balanced.

Dr. Jeanne Goldberg, director of the Center on Nutrition Communication at Tufts University, a dietician with a Ph.D. in nutrition, suggests taking a look at the current issue of the Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter, which tries to answer the question: "Is it possible to follow the Atkins diet healthfully?"

"The short answer is no," Goldberg observes. "It is virtually impossible to get adequate amounts of a number of essential nutrients. It contains three times the saturated fat as someone consuming an 1,800-calorie diet should. It's pretty tricky to get adequate amounts of calcium on it."

And while she dismisses "many of the arguments that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine makes" as "not grounded in good science," she is unflinching in her impatience for those who tout the health benefits of Atkins: "Here's my take on it: It's not a balanced diet. A diet which tells you that you really can't eat all fruits and very few vegetables is not a healthful diet."

That's not to say that you can't lose weight on the diet, as millions have done and continue to do. "What the data show so far is that people can lose weight on anything from the most sensible balanced diet to the Atkins diet," she says. "The problem comes in terms of maintenance. The Atkins diet as a maintenance diet is really a poor idea, because it is high in saturated fat and low in other essential nutrients. It isn't about losing weight. It's about keeping it off."

Look, it's simple physics. If you take in more calories than you burn, through exersize or metabolism, you gain weight. Some foods are more calorie dense, and your body does react to them differently, however, your assessment that you can eat 3000 extra calories a day is ludicrous.

If you eat fat all day, you're gonna be fat, period.

Sugar is just not good for you, like the health nuts have been saying for years. Fat's not good for your heart or your bodies ability to fend off cancer, and other disease.

You can lose weight, but I've seen a lot of people who really need to lose 80 pounds losing 20-30 on a low carb diet and then going right back up.. horrifying when thinking of the crap in their veins.

A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture, and afterwards a young man, obviously a football player type, came up to me and said that what I said made a lot of sense, but I seemed to be quite thin. I could feel how he had me stereotyped, and that he was assuming that because I am lean therefore I am weak. I asked him how much he weighed, and how much he could bench press. He said he weighed 200 pounds, and could bench press his weight. "That's good," I said, knowing that few men are strong enough to be able to bench press their weight. Then I continued: "I weigh 160 pounds, and I can also bench press your weight." His jaw dropped. "Really?" he asked. "Really," I said.

Then he commenced to kick my sprout-eating butt.

Look, it's simple physics. If you take in more calories than you burn, through exersize or metabolism, you gain weight.

So, those are the only two ways a calorie can leave the body? I guess you don't poop much. Everybody recognizes that a lot of fiber leaves the body unmetabolized, so why can't other foods, under certain metabolic conditions? Why is it so hard to realize that the body doesn't process food with 100% efficiency, and that all calories may NOT be equal?

Something else is happening to the extra calories, or this study wouldn't have such interesting results.

however, your assessment that you can eat 3000 extra calories a day is ludicrous.

Well, I never said that. I said that I've had multiple days of eating 4000 calories. From that, where do you get that I'm eating 3000 EXTRA calories a day?

Even so, you can't make a blanket conclusion about what would happen ANYWAY if I DID eat 3000 extra calories a day. You have no idea of my metabolism, wieght, BMI, colon motility or any of the other necessary variables.

Sugar is just not good for you, like the health nuts have been saying for years. Fat's not good for your heart or your bodies ability to fend off cancer, and other disease.

This statement, by itself, is so woefully inaccurate and incomplete that I can only assume you meant to fill in a number of missing blanks. I assume that you mean "refined sugar in the diet", since I think you would contend that other natural sugars are perfectly healthy. I assume that you mean "trans-fats" or other specific fats that can be bad for you, if your body happens to deposit them straight into the arteries (another thing that happens mostly when you combine them with carbs, and apparently less so if you don't). The fats in fish oil, on the other hand, are QUITE good for you. Turns out the fats in butter are MUCH better for you than the fats in margarine.

You've made a number of assertions in your post, and they all are either about a subject you don't know (ME), or incomplete at best. If you feel I've characterized them unfairly, please let me know.

Interestingly, there's a school of vegetarian thought that levels a similar claim at meat eaters.

One of the things that interests me is that any time radical vegetarianism or vegans are discussed because of their attempts to "prove" their way is best and the other way will lead to doom, a lot of meat eaters respond in exactly the same manner, citing so-called studies that spout one theory over another "proving" that those who do not eat meat are destined to be deficient in one health area or another.

Why can't we all just get along and eat what we want and suffer the consequences for our decision? I don't eat what I don't want to eat, i.e., the flesh or body of anything with fur, feathers, blood, veins, or anything that shits in the same manner as a human. It's just that simple. I don't eat what makes me sick to my stomach, a list which is not confined solely to meat. I don't like nuts in my brownies, pineapple on my pizza, broccoli in my "cheese" casserole or coconut on ANYTHING.

On the other hand, I could not live without cheese and will not avoid sweet potato pie simply because it has eggs in it. My people are farmers: cattle, pork, corn and soybeans. I prefer the corn and soybeans but, as stated before, I don't care what anyone else is eating as long as they're not on the Dahmer diet. And that includes dogs, cats, and pigeons too. People should be free to eat any non-human thing they want to eat free from the condemnation of others.

BTW, yours was an interesting post and confirms the rightness of my inclination to swat the fly while it sits in the potato salad, not after it's flown away.

I suggest you first go to the dictionary and look up calorie.

LOL! Instead, why don't you go look up how most food companies "measure" the calories in their food that they list on the label? The answer is that, most of the time, they don't bother. They just use the standard 4-4-9 classification and a calculator. However, eat a can of corn, and then put the resultant crap in a bomb calorimeter and you'll find the answer is decidedly non-zero.

Interestingly enough, animal agriculture is pretty diligent about studying the difference between Gross Energy and Digestible Energy, because the raising of livestock has already become so politically incorrect that they don't care about offending the nutritionist lobby. All they care about is the economics; pumping in the least expensive amount feed with the most digestibility. It's a shame human nutrition research is still shackled by "deeply held convictions" which often don't trace to rigorous science.

You see, part of the problem relevant to THIS discussion is that the few studies done comparing food intake on traditional and low-carb diets haven't done the fecal analysis necessary to determine if this is one possible explanation of how the extra calories were "lost". I can't fathom why they haven't done this, when many other studies show differences in the intestinal absorption of different foods.

Remind me to tell you about the time I was a test subject in a low-carb/low-fat (human) metabolic study. I (along with most other subjects) gained weight on the low-fat portion, lost weight on the low-carb portion, and yet the researcher concluded that the low-fat portion was more conducive to weight loss...it's all about how you set up the strawman. Oh, and it was peer reviewed and published, to boot.

If you can't get the concept that you can't poop a calorie, there really is no sense in continuing.

If you can't get the concept that the number of calories listed on the can is more often than not a theoretical absolute rather than a true measure of the energy actually available to the body (as it is often misrepresented), then there really IS no sense in continuing. Do you truly believe your body enjoys the same energy value from 10 grams of fiber vs. 10 grams of sugar? And yet, most food labelers treat them as straight up carbohydrates, assigning them 4 Cal/g.

OTOH, if you're merely playing semantic games because you're upset that I didn't say "excreting fecal matter containing caloric content NOT metabolized from the food" instead of "pooping calories", then there really IS no sense in continuing.

Meanwhile, I can give you another obvious example of caloric excretion, albeit one that is indicative of serious problems. Diabetics who expel sugar in the urine are literally pissing cal...er, "expelling urine containing caloric content".

I offered three studies about vitamin deficiencies. There are dozens more. The fact that they exist is hardly an attempt to evangelize you to a different way of eating. Any offense you took was entirely of your own manufacture.

Certainly vegans aren't the only people who struggle with vitamin deficiencies. One of the most common faults found with the Atkins diet is that it could lead to deficiencies... exactly the reason the dear Dr. recommends supplementation.

Why can't we all just get along and eat what we want and suffer the consequences for our decision?

By all means. Just don't expect the world of biochemistry research to come to a screeching halt. Similarly, don't expect the rest of us to stop reading about and discussing nutrition just because you want to sing kum-ba-ya.

And if you're looking for someone to "swat", how about firing off a couple of letters to Lancet or Journal of Nutrition and scold them for daring publish such basic science.

Enjoy your textured vegetable protein and have a lovely day.

Any offense you took was entirely of your own manufacture.

Geez, Man, I didn't take any offense to your post at all, I said it was interesting, and it was. I enjoyed the fact that you had citations.

What I said was that I find it interesting (which I do) that every time these PETA types try to enforce their vision by saying meat eating is unhealthy, a bunch of people lambaste vegetarians in general and turn around and do the same thing they're complaining about the PETA types doing. I was just noting the irony of that.

Read my profile page (as i did yours) and I think you'll come to understand that I, like perhaps you, am basically a smartass. Most of my posts are fairly tongue-in-cheek even if factually or opinionally accurate. All of my posts in this thread certainly are.

And if you're looking for someone to "swat", how about firing off a couple of letters to Lancet or Journal of Nutrition and scold them for daring publish such basic science.

I assume this statement is in response to mine: "BTW, yours was an interesting post and confirms the rightness of my inclination to swat the fly while it sits in the potato salad, not after it's flown away."

This (clearly?) was a reference to your citation of the study of Indians who moved to England and was, again, a joke. Which brings me to the overall point that I've been making on this whole thread that the battle among diets in this world is a joke.

There was a time in my life when I took all of my medical advice from Paul Harvey. When Dr. Harvey told me to add grape juice to my diet, I did. When he told me drinking would kill me I stopped drinking. When he reported about a study touting the health benefits of beer and hard liqour, I started drinking again.

When Dr. Harvey reported that some scientist somewhere found that gardening might cause Parkinson's disease, I quit my favorite pastime. I decided to take it up again after Harvey told me that drinking lots of coffee appeared to reduce one's risk of Parkinson's. Of course, I had to buy a new coffee pot because I quit drinking coffee years ago due to high blood pressure. I stopped watching TV after a study suggested that spending a lot of time in front of the tube leads to Alzheimer’s. But when another study found that drinking two to three glasses of alcoholic beverages per day significantly reduces the chance of getting Alzheimer’s, I cranked up the TV, but now I make sure I have a stiff drink while watching.

My point (if I have one) can best be summarized by Sarasota's succinct post #6 on this thread: "Why does it have to be one diet or the other? Let everyone find what works for him/herself and get these drummers off their soapbox(es). For God's sake, people, figure it out for yourself based on how you feel--and look in the mirror once in awhile to do a reality check."

So I'm sorry if you misunderstand from where I'm coming (I'm certainly no Kum-ba-ya type) and I'm sorry my previous post solicited such a visceral reaction from you. Perhaps you're running a little low on B-12.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.