Healthy Diet

March 21, 2007

It wasn't that long ago, the Atkins Diet was all the rage. The traditional nutritionists and vegetarian crowd couldn't stand it. They screamed, "Atkins is a fraud. Encouraging people to eat meat and dairy products is unhealthy." There has always been a certain elite "know it all" group preaching that saturated fat will not only make you fat, but it will also raise your cholesterol and give you a heart attack.

Well, just when the anti-Atkins Team thought they had the protein diet on the run, a new study comes out.

Headlines read, "Atkins Diet Found To Benefit Women." Christopher Gardner, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California and author of the study, gives credit to the Atkins Diet, acknowledging that he and his Team were skeptical. Four different diets were tested -- Zone, LEARN, Ornish, and Atkins. I don' t know anything about these diets, but Atkins came out the big winner. The Atkins group lost 10.4 pounds on average. The next best was 5.7 pounds and down from there.

That's impressive but the most impressive finding was that women on Atkins had the most improvement in terms of cholesterol level and blood pressure. Vegetarians don't believe it -can't stand it.

As countries all over Asia become more prosperous, they are asking for more meat. It is a good thing if they can feel confident that a diet including meat and dairy, which can be high in saturated fat, can still be healthy to eat. I'm all for eating some of everything but not too much of anything. The study, published in the Journal ofthe American Medical Association, should give us confidence when we order our next steak or pork chop.

Until next week, I am John Block from Washington.