We continue to experiment with the site- chapter 2 will go back soon. It’s a tricky thing whether to put it on or not- the book is as much about eating healthy as losing weight.
As regards the Center for Science in the Public Interest- these people are well-intentioned (unlike the South Beach marketing mafia who in my opinion care mostly about your money). This does not mean that everything anyone at CSPI ever said is correct. Yes, South Beach is less dangerous than Atkins, but, in my opinion, South Beach is still very dangerous. In my opinion, an imperfect analogy would be Atkins is like smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day, and South Beach is like smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
Still waiting for you to buy the book so you can tell everyone the interesting things that are in the later chapters.
Will be on radio and TV just a little bit in the next couple weeks, it’s a start…

Adam

Thanks, I was really just joking about the free copy! And I didn’t mean to imply your book was about what is wrong with low-carb diets…I think I said I liked your diet plan and the focus on health. But I did have an issue with the way you dealt with low-carb diets in your chapter 2.

We’ll probably have to agree to disagree. Two things: I’m not really making the point that low-carb diets are *better* than low or high GI diets. I am making the case that it seems that many people find it difficult or impossible to comply with diets that are higher carb. And I think there is something to this that needs to be better understood.

Scondly, I have to disagree with assertion that there is “no question” that low carb diets cause heart disease. There may be no question for you, but there are people who are studying low-carb diets, and they don’t all seem to be selling diet books.

There’s also the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They wrote in their newsletter that the South Beach diet was a “[healthy] version of [the] Atkins diet that’s backed by solid evidence on fats and heart disease.” You wrote in your chapter 2 (now offline) that in your opinion, “Dr. Agatston appears to invent facts whenever it suits him.”

Pardon me for not knowing whether to trust you or the CSPI!

Now, you may well have legitimate points against these studies or the CSPI. I only raise it to suggest that maybe there’s still a question about whether or not low-carb diets are useful tools for weight management.

I don’t think it’s really worth your time to try and convince a lowly blogger. But I must admit to wishing that you’d look a little beyond what you think you see in low-carbing. It’s not only about inhaling saturated fats and saying goodbye to vegetables.

Beth

PS. Am I to blame/take credit for your pulling chapter 2 off the site? Yikes! BTW, you may want to pull it off the server. It’s easy enough to download it just by tweaking chapter 1′s URL.

My book is really not mostly about what is wrong with low carb diets. The later chapters in the book (I can’t post the whole book online, can I?) tell specifically which foods cause heart disease and which foods cause cancer, and which food prevent heart disease and which foods prevent cancer. That said, there have been 20 randomized, controlled clinical trials of low carb diets. 4 have found greater weight loss with low glycemic index diets, 2 have found greater weight loss with high glycemic index diets, and the remaining 14 studies found no difference whatsoever. And as someone who is treating patients with coronary artery disease every day, I can tell you there is no question that low carb diets dramatically cause heart disease, much as there is no question that smoking dramatically causes heart disease. An excellent summary of this research was published in the November 2002 issue of Obesity Reviews by Dr. Raben of the Department of Human Nutrition in Denmark.
Later chapters in the book discuss the psychology of overeating. Psychological issues associated with overeating often can be treated successfully. I am a surgeon not a psychologist, and obviously I do not do behavioral therapy, etc. myself, but I can tell you, having seen the results in patients I have referred, that a combination of strategies often does work. This does not always work, but often it does.
In any event, I would send you a copy but I have very few copies myself. Most of the nurses in the Cardiac Surgical ICU at Yale have asked me for a copy, and I can’t even give each of them a copy, and these are people I work with every day. If you buy a copy on amazon and read the whole book, I think you will find it is worth every penny.

Warm regards,

Adam

Thanks so much for the reply. I’m not in a position to debate you, so I won’t try. But I will say that it is clear that not all medical professionals agree with you as the recent conference on carb restriction suggests. Maybe I’ll write an email to Discovery Health and suggest they put you and one of the Dr. Eades on to debate the point on their Discovery CME programs.

As I mentioned, I don’t eat a low-carb diet. But having been on them before, I am *very* sympathetic to their appeal for others. Whether it’s the ketones, the stable blood sugar, or what, complying with this diet was easy for me. My problem, of course, was that when I tried this (many years ago), it wasn’t a diet I was prepared to stay on for life.

Finally, I think the low-carb evangelists would love to have more randomized, controlled clinical trials. But hasn’t it been difficult for these to be funded because of the inherent belief in the medical community that low-carb diets are bad?

Anyways, I liked your book and your plan. In a perfect world though, you wouldn’t be so quick to condemn low-carb as a fad diet and begin to look at what I think are critical questions of carbs, weight, diet compliance, and health.

Beth

Thanks for your kind words. I do want to emphasize that the book discusses not only how to lose weight, but also how to eat to avoid heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
What distinguishes THE GOLDEN GATE DIET from the fad diets is that it is based on my clinical experiences successfully treating patients with weight disorders as well as on the scientific literature. And make no mistake, the scientific literature is clear. Low-carb diets are extremely dangerous. For example, Drs. Anderson and Jenkins, from the University of Kentucky and the University of Toronto, have calculated that on average the Atkins diet will increase your cholesterol by 51 points, which leads to a greater than 100% increase in your risk of heart disease. This article, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American College of Nutrition, is one among many articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals that make the dangers of low-carb diets clear.
Which brings me to another point. THE GOLDEN GATE DIET is based on scientific evidence. Physicians have conducted randomized, controlled clinical trials. The evidence from these trials is referenced extensively in the book. As a physician and scientist, I do not believe in hearsay, rumor, and pet theories: I look at what the evidence is. The great bulk of the fad diets do not look at the evidence and the data but simply invent out of thin air. People who want to lose weight and eat healthily should follow a diet based on the facts.
Moreover, I feel it is my responsibility as a physician and surgeon to warn my patients with heart disease about the dangers of low-carb diets. I have warned them for years about the dangers smoking has for the heart, because that is what the scientific evidence shown, and in the same way, I warn my hearrt patients about the dangers of low-carb diets, because that is what the scientific evidence has shown.

Warm regards,

Adam Brook, M.D., Ph.D.
Fellow, Cardiac Surgery
Yale University School of Medicine