The all-the-steak-you-want diet is no more. If the Atkins diet people are to be believed, it never was. But hundreds of thousands of adherents thought otherwise and reveled in their freedom to eat as much red meat as they liked.
They were shocked and more than a little upset to learn that for five years, according to officials of Atkins Nutritionals, the company set up by Dr. Robert C. Atkins to sell Atkins products and promote the diet, the company's nutritionists have been traveling the country, telling health professionals, but not dieters, to eat no more than 20 percent of their calories from saturated fat. The rest should come from polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat, largely from vegetable oils and fish.
That still leaves room for a lot of steak -- 17 ounces of strip steak for someone who eats 1,500 calories a day. For 2,500 calories a day, that is more than a pound and a half.
The level of saturated fat that is permitted in the Atkins diet is still more than in other low-carbohydrate diets, and 60 percent of calories are still supposed to come from fat, although trans fats are not permitted. But setting a limit brings the diet more in line with others, like the South Beach Diet.
The diet industry is still riven by arguments over the best way to lose weight, but many mainstream researchers say that if low-carb diets have moved people away from refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour, they have accomplished something important. And some acknowledge that a low-carb diet fills many people better than a low-fat diet, helping to keep them on the diet.
This seems like a postive, common sense move forward by the Atkins Nutritionals.
Eat right. Live better.
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