Following the popular low-carb, high-fat plan led to an angioplasty, the plaintiff claims.
By Associated Press
Published May 28, 2004
WEST PALM BEACH - A businessman sued the promoters of the Atkins Diet and the estate of founder Dr. Robert Atkins, claiming the low-carbohydrate, high-fat meal plan led to a clogged artery.
Jody Gorran, 53, of Delray Beach filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. He seeks less than $15,000 but also wants the diet plan to be ordered to put warnings on its products, books and promotions.
Gorran said Thursday he started the diet in May 2001 after his weight rose from 140 to 148 pounds. In two months, he said, his cholesterol rose from a normal 146 to 230, a level considered risky. But he continued to follow a regimen of New York strip steak, high-fat cheeses and cheesecake.
Eventually, chest pain led him to seek medical treatment and in October 2003, he needed heart angioplasty and a stent to clear a clogged major artery.
"I came very close to dying, and this is from a diet I thought was marvelous," said Gorran, who owns a company that makes solar panels for swimming pools.
Atkins Nutritionals said in a statement it stands by the science that has "repeatedly reaffirmed the safety and health benefits of the Atkins Nutritional Approach."
The statement also lambasted what it called an "extremist animal rights vegan group," the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which helped Gorran prepare the suit. The group advocates a vegan diet banning meat, fish, dairy and egg products.
For years, doctors and nutritionists have debated the Atkins Diet, which advocates meat, eggs and cheese, frowns on bread, rice and fruit, and allows up to two-thirds of calories from fat, more than double the usual advice.
Atkins, who died at age 72 in April 2003 after a fall on an icy sidewalk, maintained that carbohydrates generate too much insulin, which makes people hungrier and encourages them to overeat. His books, including the best-selling Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, have sold 15-million copies.
In 1979 a New York jury rejected an elderly, overweight woman's lawsuit claiming the Atkins Diet caused her heart disease.
