|
|
|
CarbHealth Magazine
"Will Low-Carb Ever Be In Favor?" - By Levi Wallach
Recently there were a couple of pieces on line that I read that criticized low-carb plans. Of course this is nothing new, but it often seems like the response to such criticism doesn't often get press the way the criticisms themselves do, so I thought I'd address some of this in my column this month.
One of the recent criticism comes from a study by Brevata et al published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers from Stanford and Yale reviewed 107 studies involving 94 diet programs involving 3,268 people. Their conclusion? First was that people on low carb diets lose weight because of calorie restriction. Secondly there is "insufficient evidense for or against the use of low-carbohydrate diets."
This is a step up from previous critique's where the unfounded assumptions about dangers of kidney problems or heart disease were presented as facts, but it still goes to show how much resistance there still is concerning low-carb within the mainstream medical press. First of all, the data from these were not collected by the study's authors themselves, just taken from other studies. How do we know whether there weren't other studies that contradicted the main thrust of their study? We don't. Researchers can be very selective in which "evidence" they decide to include in such "meta-studies" in order to prove their point or push their agenda.
But more to the point, even if it were all about the calories, my response to this is a resounding "so what??" If being on a low-carb plan allows one to consume fewer calories while not being hungry all the time, not thinking about food all the time, etc., then why is this a bad thing? I don't understand why this is a criticism?
The other criticism I have been hearing more often is that many of the recent studies (Duke, University of Pensylvania, and Cincinatti to name a few) that have shown an advantage of low-carb over the standard AMA/AHA-recommended diet still only have 6 months worth of data behind them (although some that have been going on for longer will be revealing their data for 12 months). This seems to be a really good argument for those critics who simply do not want to ever concede to low-carb being a healthy way to eat. I can easily see them saying the same thing 5 years from now - that studies really need to track people for 10 years, and so on. Of course this degree of skepticism was never foisted on the low-fat movement. It was simply accepted as dogma without having to be proven on a long-term basis. Why the double-standard?
The other piece that I read online recently was a "debate" between the practically-zero-fat diet doctor, Dr. Dean Ornish, with a representative of the Atkins Dr. Trager. Ornish, as he always does, criticizes ad nauseum the fact that there is meat on the Atkins diet. He waxes on about butter and brie and pork chops and sausage. He cannot seem to get around this. As some may know, his diet has almost no fat at all. In order to accomplish this goal, he recommends not eating ANY meat, not even chicken. He begrudgingly will allow one to eat fish, but really does not promote that as part of his plan - because of course fish has fat too, even though it is very high in beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids. He touts his diet as being able to reverse heart disease, but when you look closer, his results come from those in his clinic who not only follow his diet (under strict medical supervision) but also do a heavy regime of stress-management and exercise. So how can one separate these variables? Ornish is being untruthful when he says the diet itself alone is proven to have these beneficial effects.
What many may not know about Ornish is that he is an advisory board member of a controversial group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine whose agenda is the elimination of meat as a food. "Meat consumption is just as dangerous to public health as tobacco use.… It's time we looked into holding the meat producers and fast-food outlets legally accountable." PCRM's Neal Barnard in a September 1999 U.S. Newswire press release, urging a federal lawsuit against "Big Meat." The American Medical Association has called PCRM "an animal rights front organization" and has warned them against unethical practices. Ornish talks a good game about science, but it's often hard to separate his stance on diet from his background in eastern religion (which includes both meditation and vegetarianism). I have no qualms with being a vegetarian for religious reasons, but sometimes those who are committed to a stance due to philosophical reasons will try to find any other way to justify it, ignoring the evidence that is contrary.
The good news is that I think the criticism is more and more falling on deaf ears. Otherwise we couldn't be seeing so many new people jumping onto low-carb as we have over the last year. The public has been fed (no pun intended) this line of goods for years and told to observe a diet that doesn't work at all for many, and for many others it only gives very temporary and partial relief from some of their health and weight issues. Meanwhile there's a growing number of low-carb advocates enjoying success and not feeling deprived all the time and also not seemingly having any health repercussions - in fact experiencing great benefits. Well, eventually, it starts to occur to even the most stolid supporters of low-fat that we may be getting sold something that doesn't work. Low-fat products have apparently plummeted in sales, and this just shows that people are no longer heading the "experts" who have been telling them to eat a certain way (and when they do and don't lose, accuse them of cheating or having no willpower). I have also heard second-hand that although the official "line" is that low-carb needs more study, that doctors are no longer jumping down patients' throats who go on such plans. They are not necessarily suggesting them, though, but still this is a step in the right direction, and some doctors have become enthusiastic supporters as increasing number of patients show not only weight-loss results but great health-improvement results.
