Why Not Low-Fat Atkins?
Fat is the mechanism that makes controlled-carbohydrate weight loss work. Atkins teaches you how to use fat to your advantage. When you are doing Atkins, fat is your friend, not only because it is satiating (keeps you fuller for longer), but also because it slows down the release of glucose into the blood. By moderating Read More
Trans Fats: The Truth in Labeling
TRANS FATS: TRUTH IN LABELING? Beginning in 2006, the US Government has mandated that trans fats have to be listed on the nutrition facts label of every food. You might think that would be the end of the matter. Just look for “no trans fats” on the label, or a big Zero next to the Read More
The Dangers of Trans Fats
Manufactured hydrogenated oils, which your body cannot digest, are a serious risk to heart health. Many Americans are still unaware that the one of the most harmful heart-health trends of the last century was the gradual replacement of healthy natural fats with foods such as margarine. Many margarines were formed by hydrogenating or partially hydrogenating Read More
The Cholesterol Myth
Eating fatty foods raises cholesterol to dangerous levels, endangering cardiovascular health, right? Not necessarily. Let’s take this step by step: What is cholesterol? Like fats, cholesterol is a lipid, and like them, it’s essential for life. How so? Cholesterol, along with fats, is essential for normal cellular function, hormone production, and infection fighting. How is Read More
Shifting From Carbohydrate to Fat for Exercise
Summary: The following information was written by Atkins professionals. The purpose of this study was to assess metabolic adaptations to a high-fat diet in endurance cyclists. Sixteen endurance-trained cyclists were randomly assigned to one of two diet groups for a period of 15 days. One group remained on their habitual diet (30% of calories from Read More
Men’s Health Magazine Gets it Right
Recently, as readers of this newsletter know, award winning science reporter Gary Taubes published a best-selling book that questioned the wisdom of low-fat diets and backed up every claim with copious research (over 100 pages worth of footnotes and references). Now a popular magazine has followed suit. The generally excellent Men’s Health magazine has published Read More
Low-Fat Diets Don’t Deliver on Heart Health
Unless you’re living on another planet, you’ve heard this message: reduce your intake of fat and cholesterol to achieve a healthy weight and decrease the likelihood of developing heart disease. In fact, the terms “healthy” and “low fat” seem inextricably linked. But now we know that the rationale for a low-fat diet is based on Read More
Lack of Omega 3’s may Play a Role in Aggressive Behavior
Omega-3 fats are selectively concentrated in the brain, which may be why your mother– correctly, as it turns out–told you that fish was “brain food.” And now new research is demonstrating that both depressive and aggressive disorders can be exacerbated by deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acid intake. Joseph Hibbeln, MD and his team at the Read More
Avoiding Trans-Fats When Eating Out
Most readers of this site now understand how to avoid trans-fats: read the label and be on the lookout for “partially hydrogenated oil”. If “partially hydrogenated oil” is in the ingredients, the food contains trans-fats. But how do you avoid trans-fats while eating out, when the ingredient list is almost never available? One sure way Read More
Atkins Position on Saturated Fat
“The thirty-year-long campaign against dietary fat is as misguided as it is futile”. That statement, written in The New Diet Revolution by Dr. Robert Atkins, is now being vindicated with startling regularity as new research continues to show. There’s good reason to believe that even mainstream researchers have come to realize that the demonization of Read More