This past weekend at Wimbledon, Venus and Serena Williams dominated. They each advanced to the final round of the singles championship (little sister Serena won it this year), and then teamed up the next day to win the doubles title – once again.
I watched their doubles match as I browsed through the Sunday New York Times. The cover story in the magazine was a new chapter in another intense volley that’s been going on for years in the diet world.
This volley is Brody vs. Atkins. That is: Jane E. Brody, the columnist who writes on health issues for the New York Times, and Robert C. Atkins, M.D., the author of “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution.”
To say that these two have been adversarial is to put it mildly. And now, suddenly, their face-off has taken a surprising and unexpected turn that may leave Ms. Brody with some high-protein egg on her face.
That was then
I should mention that Agora, HSI’s parent company, has published Dr. Atkin’s newsletter in the past, so I’ve met and worked with this pioneer of complementary medicine. Over the course of 30 years, Dr. Atkins has not wavered from his controversial dietary ideas. In a nutshell, Dr. Atkins advises us to eat as much meat and other high protein and high fat foods as we care to, while avoiding starches and refined carbohydrates such as breads, pasta, rice and sugars. This plan has won many millions of readers, but has drawn numerous, often passionate attacks from the nutrition and diet establishment.
Enter Jane E. Brody who has ridiculed the Atkins plan a number of times through the years. In 1999 she wrote a column for the New York Times, in which she scoffed at the diet and gleefully quoted two nutritionists who said, “‘The Atkins diet is potentially so dangerous that the Surgeon General should probably put a warning on every book Dr. Robert Atkins sells.” Finally she dismissively pointed out that no researchers had taken the “Atkins scheme” seriously (although she personally knew four people who tried the diet and had problems with it – apparently that was all the “research” she needed to form a conclusion).
But that was then and this is now. And now Ms. Brody has the opportunity to enjoy a meal of high-fat crow, made possible, ironically, by the very newspaper she writes for.
Low-fat chickens come home to roost
The title of the cover story of the Sunday New York Times Magazine (7/7/02) asks this question: “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” The article’s author, Gary Taubes, states that “a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along.”
Notable among these researchers is Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. Willett, who is the spokesman for a long-running study that includes data on almost 300,000 subjects, says that the low-fat-is-good-health message is clearly contradicted by their findings. Furthermore, it appears that the extreme focus on the adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the huge upswing of obesity in America.
In the 30+ years that the idea of the low-fat diet has become gospel, the number of obese Americans has been steadily rising, to the point that obesity is now being called an epidemic. Meanwhile, the current NY Times article points out that the Atkins diet may successfully address obesity by controlling blood sugar levels and reducing the intake of empty calories.
In a letter published in the New York Times in 1999, Dr. Atkins responded to the accusations of Ms. Brody, saying, “As a practicing cardiologist, my work is based on helping patients. What motivates Ms. Brody’s hostility? She does a disservice to millions who lead healthier lives on my program and to many more who continue to embrace unproductive dietary programs thanks to misinformation of the sort propagated by Ms. Brody.”
Perhaps this past Sunday’s New York Times article has signaled an important change in direction, moving the conventional wisdom toward the close of an era of unproductive dietary programs and misinformation. Ms. Brody stated correctly in 1999 that there was as yet no major research available to support Dr. Atkins’ claims. I’m really looking forward to see how (or if) she’ll respond now that her own newspaper has delivered the news that research results have started coming in – and she was wrong.
In 1886 a young newsboy named Steve Brodie jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived. For many years after, a leap from the great bridge was referred to as “taking a Brodie.” Maybe the term will be revived and the spelling updated and in 2002 “taking a Brody” will refer to the embarrassment of publicly ridiculing someonewho later turns out to be right.
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute
Sources:
“What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” Gary Taubes, New York Times Magazine, 7/7/02
“Weight Loss Report: Personal Health; Doubts Fail to Deter ‘The Diet Revolution'” Jane E. Brody, New York Times, May 25, 1999
“Dr. Atkins Responds” Dr. Robert C. Atkins, Letter, New York Times, June 1, 1999
Copyright 1997-2002 by Institute of Health Sciences, L.L.C.
