Atkins diet facts for kids
The Atkins diet is a popular low-carbohydrate eating plan. It was created by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1970s. The main idea behind it is that eating fewer carbohydrates helps you lose weight. Dr. Atkins even claimed it could help people "stay thin forever."
This diet became very popular in the early 2000s. Dr. Atkins' book was one of the best-selling books ever. About 1 in 11 adults in North America said they were trying the diet. Dr. Atkins passed away in 2003. In 2005, the company that sold Atkins products, Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., had to file for bankruptcy because they lost a lot of money.
There isn't strong proof that the Atkins diet helps people lose weight for a long time. It can be unbalanced because it encourages eating a lot of protein and saturated fat. Some experts worry this might increase the risk of heart disease.
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How Well It Works and Its Risks
There is some evidence that the Atkins diet might help people lose a little more weight in the first 6 to 12 months compared to other weight loss advice. However, like many other diet programs, the difference in weight loss becomes smaller over longer periods.
The first weight loss on low-carb diets is often due to losing water, not fat. After this first stage, low-carbohydrate diets usually lead to similar fat loss as other diets that have the same number of calories.
Dr. Atkins did not share much information about his patients' health. Because of this, some people criticized his health claims. The Atkins diet has a lot of saturated fat. This might increase the risk of heart disease. After Dr. Atkins passed away, a medical report showed he had a history of heart problems and high blood pressure.
Big medical groups like the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, and the American Heart Association have said the Atkins diet is not balanced. A study in 2000 suggested that the very high fat content in the Atkins diet could put stress on different organs in the body.
Modified Atkins and Epilepsy
Some special diets, like the ketogenic diet, are used to help children with epilepsy. There is some proof that these diets can help reduce seizures in children. Studies also suggest that adults with epilepsy might see fewer seizures with these diets. A less strict version, like a modified Atkins diet, might also be helpful for this purpose.
What You Eat on the Diet
The Atkins diet is known as a low-carbohydrate, high-fat, and high-protein eating plan. It encourages eating lots of meat, cheese, eggs, and other high-fat foods. These include butter, mayonnaise, and sour cream. You can eat these in unlimited amounts.
However, foods like bread, cereal, pasta, and other carbohydrates are usually not allowed. Dr. Atkins' book, New Diet Revolution, sold 12 million copies. It was called "the bestselling fad-diet book ever written."
The diet suggests eating whole, unprocessed foods that have a low glycemic index. This means foods that don't raise your blood sugar quickly. However, the diet restricts both healthy low-glycemic carbs (like black rice and vegetables) and unhealthy high-glycemic carbs (like sugar and white bread) in the same way.
Because medical experts were worried about the high fat in the diet, the Atkins Nutritionals company now suggests that no more than 20% of your daily calories should come from saturated fat.
How the Diet Was Supposed to Work
The Atkins diet was inspired by an older low-carbohydrate idea from the 1940s. Dr. Atkins claimed that cutting down on carbohydrates was the "key" to losing weight.
In his early books, Dr. Atkins argued that his low-carbohydrate diet had a "metabolic advantage." He thought that burning fat used more calories, so you would burn more energy. He even said the Atkins diet was "a high calorie way to stay thin forever."
However, later studies showed that this "metabolic advantage" was not true. People on the diet were simply eating fewer calories overall. One expert said that the diet's simple and sometimes boring food choices might make people eat less without realizing it. The idea that low-carbohydrate diets have a special "metabolic advantage" has been shown to be untrue by scientific experiments.
The Diet in Society
Commercial Products
Atkins Nutritionals was started in 1989 by Dr. Atkins. It was made to sell products with the Atkins brand name. After Dr. Atkins passed away, the diet became less popular. Demand for Atkins products went down.
In 2005, Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. had to file for bankruptcy because of big financial losses. Later, in 2007, a company called North Castle Partners bought it. They changed the focus to selling low-carb snacks. The company has been bought and sold a few times since then. In 2017, it became part of a public company called Simply Good Foods.
History of Its Popularity
Dr. Atkins first shared his ideas in his 1972 book, Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution: The High Calorie Way to Stay Thin Forever.
The diet became very popular in 2003 and 2004. At its peak, about one in eleven adults in North America said they were on a low-carb diet like Atkins. This huge popularity was even blamed for a big drop in sales of foods high in carbohydrates, like pasta and rice. Sales of these foods went down in 2003. Some even said the diet caused a decline in Krispy Kreme donut sales! Many companies tried to make money from the "low-carb craze" by releasing their own low-carbohydrate products.
However, around that time, the number of American adults on the diet dropped to just two percent. Sales of Atkins brand products also fell sharply in the second half of 2004.
A recent article in 2021 noted that, 50 years after it first appeared, the Atkins diet was "coming back" again.
Cost of the Diet
A study by Forbes magazine looked at the cost of different diets. They found that the Atkins diet was one of the most expensive to follow. This was partly because the diet's recipe book included some costly ingredients, like lobster tails. These were put in the book to show that you could eat a variety of foods.
The study showed that the average cost of the diets they looked at was about 50% higher than the national average in America. The Atkins diet was about 80% more expensive. However, it was still less expensive than the Jenny Craig diet, but more expensive than Weight Watchers.
Lawsuit Against the Diet
In 2004, a man named Jody Gorran sued Dr. Robert Atkins' estate and his company. Mr. Gorran said he followed the Atkins diet for two years. He claimed it raised his LDL-cholesterol (often called "bad" cholesterol) so much that a major artery became blocked. He needed a medical procedure to open it. On the Atkins diet, he had eaten a lot of cheese, which is high in saturated fat.
Mr. Gorran said that the problem was not just that his cholesterol went up. He felt that the Atkins company kept saying that eating a lot of saturated fat would not be a problem if you avoided refined carbohydrates, and he believed this was untrue. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2007. The court decided that the Atkins diet was just "advice and ideas," which are protected by the law.
See Also
- Dukan Diet
- Ketogenic diet
- KE Diet
- List of diets
- Online weight loss plans
- PSMF diet
