Fat busters or folly?

[Times art: Earl Towery]

By SUSAN ASCHOFF

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 23, 2001

Meat and fat are back on the plates of dieters, served up with renewed debate over whether high-protein, low-carb eating is healthful.

America's expanding waistline has prompted as many different diets as styles of relaxed-fit pants.

Twenty years ago, a diner wanting to slim down would eat an entire package of pasta for dinner.

Five years ago, he'd make a meal out of fat-free rice cakes.

Today, on the advice of friends and bookstore shelves brimming with high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet books, he's grilling steaks and making ham sandwiches, hold the bread.

High-protein diets are back, despite warnings from medical groups that the menus are dangerously high in fat, can lead to heart disease and omit the variety of foods essential for good health.

Many of their biggest fans are men. The diets appeal to meat lovers. They allow more calories -- some include a daily "reward meal" when the dieter can eat anything he wants. And they bring quick results.

"I saw a difference after two weeks. My clothes fit looser. That was enough incentive to keep me going," says Britt Laughlin, who began high-protein, low-carbohydrate eating almost two years ago at the urging of co-workers on the Atkins diet. He has lost 40 pounds.

"The high-protein diet is not that hard to stay on," says Laughlin, a St. Petersburg resident who works as a systems administrator at Home Shopping Network. "It hasn't been that difficult to cut out most of the carbs."

The trend is not new. Robert C. Atkins first published a high-protein diet book 20 years ago. With his more recent how-to, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, he claims 20-million followers worldwide. Other best-selling titles on the subject include Protein Power, Sugar Busters, The Zone and The Carbohydrates Addict's Diet.

All are variations of high-protein, low-carb eating. All restrict bread, pasta, potatoes and sweets, and many permit staggering portions of beef, bacon, cheese, oil, butter and even ice cream.

The diets are based on hormonal changes in the body that occur when we eat carbohydrate-packed foods. Blood sugar rises and remains high. Insulin secreted by the body to carry the sugar out of the blood cannot keep up, research says, so the sugar goes to fat cells rather than muscle cells and is stored. By eliminating carbohydrates, the books say, the body burns fat.

The problem, say critics, is an unbalanced and potentially harmful diet.

"When people go on these high-protein diets, they cut out two layers of the pyramid: grains and fruits," says Karen Chalmers, director of nutrition services at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, referring to the six food groups and daily servings recommended under U.S. Dietary Guidelines.

"Carbohydrates are our brain's main fuel," she says.

"High protein," she says, "almost always means animal protein, so you're going to get saturated fat. Fat can be toxic. I have a lot of people who have had heart attacks while on high-protein, low-carb diets."

Earlier this month the American Heart Association strongly recommended against high-protein weight loss programs, saying there is little evidence of long-term success and a potential risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. At least two of the diets -- Atkins and Protein Power -- call for as much as 60 percent of calories from fat, the advisory said.

Atkins spokeswoman Colette Heimowitz says critics are using scare tactics.

Many people "can't, won't and don't follow low-fat recommendations" and need a safe and effective alternative to obesity, she told the Washington Post.

More than 100-million Americans, or about 60 percent, are overweight, the National Institutes of Health reports. As many as a third are considered obese, or 20 percent or more above ideal weight.

High-protein, low-carb diets work not because of some magical chemical reaction but because they cut calories, says the American Heart Association.

Healthy dieters do not make extreme choices, says Nick Terzick, sales manager at Gold's Gym in St. Petersburg. With the Atkins diet, he's seen clients' cholesterol "shoot through the roof." Those who avoid fats have skin and hair that "look awful."

"I tell people to eat their carbohydrates before 6 p.m. because it takes longer to burn off" but not to eliminate nutritional foods, he says. "Our nutrition programs have boomed over the last few years. We don't like to call it a diet: It's eating habits for life."

People who worry about slipping up may embrace the rigid rules found in self-help books as a sort of enforced willpower. In Sugar Busters, for example, dieters are told to eat fruit 20 minutes before the rest of the meal. Carrots and bananas are forbidden. Breakfast inThe Zone, which dictates the ratio of fats to proteins to carbohydrates at each meal, is two eggs prepared with sesame oil, 1 ounce cheese, three strips bacon, an apple and an orange. Don't even think about a piece of toast or a bagel.

Gray Gordon goes on high-protein binges when he puts on a few pounds. He stopped by his mother's house around dinner time. "I ate 12 ounces of pot roast and almost a head of broccoli," says Gordon, a supplement manager at Rollin' Oats natural foods market. "My mom had rice and gravy. I said no thanks."

Most foods, other than meat and fat, contain some carbohydrates. A piece of angel food cake, for example, may have 30 grams of carbohydrates. But so does two-thirds cup of rice, says Chalmers.

Harvard research found that men and women who ate refined carbohydrates -- white bread, white rice, potatoes, cola beverages -- were twice as likely to become diabetic as those who ate a low-carbohydrate, high-fiber diet of cereals, dried beans, legumes, peanuts, yogurt, milk, apples, broccoli and oranges.

Laughlin, the systems administrator, says he has relaxed his diet rules over the past couple of months. He plays soccer and bikes to and from work and on weekends, about 150 miles per week, to burn calories and stay physically fit.

There are foods he still will not eat, however.

"It hasn't been that difficult to cut out most of the carbs. I really stopped eating bread and potatoes. I eat vegetables. I miss the spaghetti, the Italian foods," says the 52-year-old. He is 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weighs about 175 pounds.

"I can perform at a certain level (athletically) that's enjoyable to me," he says.

Advocates of high-protein, low-carbohydrate eating say the diets return again and again because they work. Jennifer Broder, a registered dietitian and consultant who works for Tampa General Hospital, counters that they reappear because "most people gain the weight back, and then some."

More than 90 percent of dieters eventually gain back every pound they lose.

"They're not focusing on lifestyle changes," says Broder. "There is a balance to be found. I do recommend modifying your carbohydrate intake, but (not) to extremes," she says. She also is not wedded to the food pyramid and its emphasis on breads and grains.

"Make sure you have variety in your meal. And the more color on your plate the better," Broder says. "Eat more vegetables, eat more raw fruit than juices, limit saturated fats," she says, "and exercise."

There is no one diet suitable for everyone, she and others caution.

We are simply, says Chalmers, eating too many calories.

Whether touting pork chops or pasta, cream or canola oil, there is not a diet book on the shelf that can undo what each of us puts in our mouth.

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