By : Sally Squires the Washington Post
Read past headlines on diet study
Put down your steak knife and stop salivating over the butter.Just because a new study finds that the Atkins diet doesn't appear to cause the heart disease once feared is no reason to celebrate by loading up on high-fat fare.
The take-home message isn't to "eat the steaks and the whipped cream, but the fish and the fiber," says Christopher Gardner, assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and lead author of the report, which was published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.In case you missed the recent headlines, Gardner and his colleagues reported on a yearlong trial in overweight and obese women that compared four diets: the very low-carbohydrate Atkins approach; the Zone diet, a lower-carbohydrate regimen created by author Barry Sears; the very low-fat, mostly vegetarian plan by physician Dean Ornish; and a conventional reduced-calorie and low-fat approach developed by Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The $2 million study was funded by a grant from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the National Institutes of Health.Women in the Atkins group had shed an average of 10 pounds by the end of the yearlong study. That's not a statistically significant difference from the six pounds lost by the conventional diet group, the five pounds for the Ornish plan and the four pounds for the Zone. As Gardner notes, all represent "just a modest amount of weight," and far less than most dieters planned to shed. (Women in the study needed to lose from 15 to 100 pounds to reach a healthy weight. Only a few in each group lost significant amounts of weight.)Also illustrated by the study is the difficulty all four groups had in sticking to their plans, although the 331 participants received much more help than most dieters get. Each attended eight weekly sessions with a registered dietitian and received phone and e-mail reminders to return for weigh-ins and blood tests. But the sweetest part is that they were paid up to $75 per session for their participation.Despite these incentives, the groups struggled. After the first two months, the Atkins group didn't eat a diet of very low carbohydrates. The Ornish group couldn't stick with the very low-fat approach. And if all the women really ate as few calories as they reported, "they would have lost a lot more weight," notes Bonnie Brehm, professor of nutrition at the University of Cincinnati School of Nursing.Why the Atkins group shed weight a little faster and managed to lose a few more pounds is likely due to the higher protein they consumed. Protein is more satiating than carbohydrates or fat. But in any case, Gardner says that the findings don't point to the Atkins diet "as the solution to the obesity epidemic."What the findings underscore are the benefits of cutting back on processed carbohydrates, the kind that are found in white bread and in popular food and beverages with added sugar, such as sweetened breakfast cereals and soft drinks. All four diet books "said the same thing about simple carbohydrates," Gardner says. It's better to get your carbohydrates from fruit, vegetables and whole grains.Just how important that can be is illustrated by a new report of nearly 35,000 Iowa women. It found that those who regularly ate bran, apples, pears, grapefruit, strawberries, chocolate and sipped a little red wine had the lowest risks of heart disease, heart attacks and death from all causes.As for the small weight loss in the Stanford study, that need not be seen as failure, experts say. The results suggest that shedding even less than 5 percent of total body weight produced significant improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and insulin. "Even a little bit of weight loss can have some positive effects," Brehm notes.If you plan to try a low-carbohydrate diet, advises Walter Willett, professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, choose foods that reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Reach for fish, beans, poultry without the skin and the leanest cuts of red meat, as well as for small amounts of nuts and healthy oil, such as olive, canola or safflower.Finally, social support can be key. One woman in the Ornish group of the Stanford study followed the program with her husband. "They made it a contest," Gardner says. "She managed to lose 40 pounds."
The take-home message isn't to "eat the steaks and the whipped cream, but the fish and the fiber," says Christopher Gardner, assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and lead author of the report, which was published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.In case you missed the recent headlines, Gardner and his colleagues reported on a yearlong trial in overweight and obese women that compared four diets: the very low-carbohydrate Atkins approach; the Zone diet, a lower-carbohydrate regimen created by author Barry Sears; the very low-fat, mostly vegetarian plan by physician Dean Ornish; and a conventional reduced-calorie and low-fat approach developed by Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The $2 million study was funded by a grant from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the National Institutes of Health.Women in the Atkins group had shed an average of 10 pounds by the end of the yearlong study. That's not a statistically significant difference from the six pounds lost by the conventional diet group, the five pounds for the Ornish plan and the four pounds for the Zone. As Gardner notes, all represent "just a modest amount of weight," and far less than most dieters planned to shed. (Women in the study needed to lose from 15 to 100 pounds to reach a healthy weight. Only a few in each group lost significant amounts of weight.)Also illustrated by the study is the difficulty all four groups had in sticking to their plans, although the 331 participants received much more help than most dieters get. Each attended eight weekly sessions with a registered dietitian and received phone and e-mail reminders to return for weigh-ins and blood tests. But the sweetest part is that they were paid up to $75 per session for their participation.Despite these incentives, the groups struggled. After the first two months, the Atkins group didn't eat a diet of very low carbohydrates. The Ornish group couldn't stick with the very low-fat approach. And if all the women really ate as few calories as they reported, "they would have lost a lot more weight," notes Bonnie Brehm, professor of nutrition at the University of Cincinnati School of Nursing.Why the Atkins group shed weight a little faster and managed to lose a few more pounds is likely due to the higher protein they consumed. Protein is more satiating than carbohydrates or fat. But in any case, Gardner says that the findings don't point to the Atkins diet "as the solution to the obesity epidemic."What the findings underscore are the benefits of cutting back on processed carbohydrates, the kind that are found in white bread and in popular food and beverages with added sugar, such as sweetened breakfast cereals and soft drinks. All four diet books "said the same thing about simple carbohydrates," Gardner says. It's better to get your carbohydrates from fruit, vegetables and whole grains.Just how important that can be is illustrated by a new report of nearly 35,000 Iowa women. It found that those who regularly ate bran, apples, pears, grapefruit, strawberries, chocolate and sipped a little red wine had the lowest risks of heart disease, heart attacks and death from all causes.As for the small weight loss in the Stanford study, that need not be seen as failure, experts say. The results suggest that shedding even less than 5 percent of total body weight produced significant improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and insulin. "Even a little bit of weight loss can have some positive effects," Brehm notes.If you plan to try a low-carbohydrate diet, advises Walter Willett, professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, choose foods that reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Reach for fish, beans, poultry without the skin and the leanest cuts of red meat, as well as for small amounts of nuts and healthy oil, such as olive, canola or safflower.Finally, social support can be key. One woman in the Ornish group of the Stanford study followed the program with her husband. "They made it a contest," Gardner says. "She managed to lose 40 pounds."
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