Michael Fumento on the Atkins Diet Study
Michael Fumento has an interesting analysis of the much-publicized Duke University Medical Center study of the Atkins Diet which is being trumpeted as proof that the diet works. The small study of 120 people found that patients on the Atkins Diet both lost more weight and had lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. Well, at least the did if you don’t look too closely at the study.
The Atkins Diet, of course, is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that involves eating lots of meat while eschewing carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes.
There are a number of problems with the Duke University study that followed two groups of 60 dieters — one group on the Atkins Diet and the other group on a high carbohydrate diet. The biggest one is the extremely high dropout rate among the Atkins Dieters. According to Fumento, fully 43 percent of the group on the Atkins Diet dropped out before completing the six month study, compared to just 25 percent of those on the high carbohydrate diet. As Fumento puts it,
Moreover, it’s generally accepted that drop-out rates anywhere near this level completely invalidate a study because you don’t know how all those drop-outs would have affected the result. Maybe those Atkins dieters were quitting not only because of carbohydrate cravings but also because they weren’t losing weight or losing it fast enough to satisfy them.
As for the decline in cholesterol and triglycerides, Fumento points out that this is likely explained simply by virtue of the fact that those who remained on the Atkins Diet for six months did lose more weight, on average, than those on the high-carbohydrate diet. Weight loss in and of itself seems capable of lowering cholesterol and triglycerides levels.
Interestingly, Fumento cites a study similar to the Duke study that is slated for publication soon. Gary Foster, the University of Pennsylvania research behind that study, tells Fumento that people on the Atkins Diet lose weight for one simple reason: they eat less calories. Foster told Fumento that the Atkins Diet, “gives people a framework to eat fewer calories, since most of the choices in this culture are carbohydrate driven.”
But the high dropout rate of the six month Duke study highlights the question of whether or not people on the Atkins Diet can stick with it (and how do the cholesterol and triglycerides of people on this diet for a long period of time compare to people on high-carbohydrate diets with similar BMIs?)
So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the Atkins Diet has anything to recommend it over a balanced, low calorie diet combined with regular exercise.
Source:
Hold the Lard! The Atkins Diet still doesn’t work. Michael Fumento, Reason, December 5, 2002.
Tags: Michael Fumento