The truth about the Atkins diet - Cover Story - low carbohydrate diet

"What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" asked the cover story of the July 7th New York Times Magazine. The article, by freelance writer Gary Taubes, argues that loading our plates with fatty meats, cheeses, cream, and butter is the key not just to weight loss, but to a long, healthy life.

"Influential researchers are beginning to embrace the medical heresy that maybe Dr. Atkins was right," writes Taubes.

Taubes claims that it's not fatty foods that make us fat and raise our risk of disease. It's carbohydrates. And to most readers his arguments sound perfectly plausible.

Here are the facts--and the fictions--in Taubes's article, which has led to a book contract with a reported $700,000 advance. And here's what the scientists he quoted--or neglected to quote--have to say about his reporting.

Perhaps the most telling statement in Gary Taubes's New York Times Magazine article comes as he explains how difficult it is to study diet and health. "This then leads to a research literature so vast that it's possible to find at least some published research to support virtually any theory."

He got that right. It helps explain why Taubes's article sounds so credible.

"He knows how to spin a yarn," says Barbara Rolls, an obesity expert at Pennsylvania State University. "What frightens me is that he picks and chooses his facts."

She ought to know. Taubes interviewed her for some six hours, and she sent him "a huge bundle of papers," but he didn't quote a word of it. "If the facts don't fit in with his yarn, he ignores them," she says.

Instead, Taubes put together what sounds like convincing evidence that carbohydrates cause obesity.

"He took this weird little idea and blew it up, and people believed him," says John Farquhar, a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University's Center for Research in Disease Prevention. Taubes quoted Farquhar, but misrepresented his views. "What a disaster," says Farquhar.

Others agree. "It's silly to say that carbohydrates cause obesity," says George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "We're overweight because we overeat calories."

It's not clear how Taubes thought he could ignore--or distort--what researchers told him. "The article was written in bad faith," says F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, director of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. "It was irresponsible."

Here's a point-by-point response to Taubes's major claims.

CLAIM #1: The experts recommend an Atkins diet.

TRUTH: They don't.

An Atkins diet is loaded with meat, butter, and other foods high in saturated fat. Taubes implies that many of the experts he quotes recommend it. Here's what they say:

* "The article was incredibly misleading," says Gerald Reaven, the pioneering Stanford University researcher, now emeritus, who coined the term "Syndrome X." "My quote was correct, but the context suggested that I support eating saturated fat. I was horrified."

* According to Taubes, Harvard University's Walter Willett is one of the "small but growing minority of establishment researchers [who] have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along."

True, Willett is concerned about the harm that may be caused by high-carbohydrate diets (see "What to Eat," page 7). But the Atkins diet? "I certainly don't recommend it," he says.

His reasons: heart disease and cancer. "There's a clear benefit for reducing cardiovascular risk from replacing unhealthy fats--saturated and trans--with healthy fats," explains Willett, who chairs Harvard's nutrition department. "And I told Taubes several times that red meat is associated with a higher risk of colon and possibly prostate cancer, but he left that out."

* "I was greatly offended at how Gary Taubes tricked us all into coming across as supporters of the Atkins diet," says Stanford's John Farquhar.

Taubes's article ends with a quote from Farquhar, asking: "Can we get the low-fat proponents to apologize?" But that quote was taken out of context.

"What I was referring to wasn't that low-fat diets would make a person gain weight and become obese," explains Farquhar. Like Willett and Reaven, he's worried that too much carbohydrate can raise the risk of heart disease.

"I meant that in susceptible individuals, a very-low-fat [high-carb] diet can raise triglycerides, lower HDL [`good'] cholesterol, and make harmful, small, dense LDL," says Farquhar.

Carbohydrates are not what has made us a nation of butterballs, however. "We're overfed, over-advertised, and under-exercised," he says. "It's the enormous portion sizes and sitting in front of the TV and computer all day" that are to blame. "It's so gol'darn obvious--how can anyone ignore it?"

"The Times editor called and tried to get me to say that low-fat diets were the cause of obesity, but I wouldn't," adds Farquhar.

CLAIM #2: Saturated fat doesn't promote heart disease.

TRUTH: It does.

If there's any advice that experts agree on, it's that people should cut back on saturated fat. They've looked not just at its effect on cholesterol levels, but on its tendency to promote blood clots, raise insulin levels, and damage blood vessels. They've issued that advice after examining animal studies, population studies, and clinical studies. (1-3) Taubes dismisses them with one narrow argument.