Living and Dieting in the Post-Atkins World

It’s the dietary irony of our age. Low carb theory has told us that we should avoid certain foods because they cause a rapid insulin spike, followed by a consequent evacuation of glucose from your blood – known to carb eaters as the sugar blues. Even though you may start out with a quick boost of energy, it rapidly gives way to hunger and tiredness.

But the low carb revolution itself has ironically followed this same path. Its initial giddy spike of adherents and massive distribution of food products has peaked and crashed, most notably, with Monday’s Chapter 11 announcement by Atkins Nutritionals Inc. What started as a rush of energy and enthusiasm has ended with dieters paradoxically tired of fad diets and hungry for something else.

With the passing of the low carb theory, which swept out the low fat theory, maybe this provides a rare opportunity to step into a common sense position between them. After all, low fat diets left people fleeing from natural foods like butter, eggs, and even healthy nuts in exchange for food products with hydrogenated oils to replace the butter, and all manner of additive sugars to make them taste good.

The polar opposite of this approach, its dietary anti-matter, was the low carb theory that encouraged the consumption of eggs, cheese, butter – the works! – at the expense of breads, potatoes, and even fruits and veggies that happened to be high in carbohydrates.

Between these two opposing theories must be a sane middle ground, where we don’t have to give up fruits and vegetables for the carbs, nor healthy oils for the fats. If so, this post-Atkins dietary world may look nothing like the one we’re used to. Instead of a brand new diet theory to melt away your midriff, maybe we need to fly under that radar and do something a little more low tech, a little less miraculous, and a little more immediately effective.

This would entail using an observational, rather than a theoretical model to guide us. Here’s how this would work. Look at those people in the world who are thin and healthy, and use their food choices and eating habits as a general guide. After all, they must be doing something right. The only assumption you have to bear with this approach is this: if you do what they do, you will get their results. That’s a theory I can live with.

The French, for example, have an obesity rate now at 11.3 percent according to the International Obesity Task Force, three times fewer incidents of heart attacks, and they live longer than we do, men and women.

And it’s so interesting how both low carb and low fat groups claim affinity with the Mediterranean diet. Low carb adherents point to the eggs used in their cream sauces (although ignoring their daily white bread baguettes and pastries). Low fat supporters laud their famously fresh selection of fruits and vegetables (without mentioning the full fat cheese they complete most every meal with).

The middle ground then, between low fat and low carb approaches, would consist of a balance of healthy carbs with healthy fats in a way similar to the way the thin Mediterranean people eat. The best part is that their method already works, and has worked for the past few centuries. It’s not a theory, it’s a practice.

Moreover, and you and I can already see what they’re eating and eat that. We can already see how they’re eating and eat that way, and no one needs a Ph.D. in biochemistry to know what to do with their fork. In so adopting their cultural habits, we would get their low weight, healthy hearts, and longer lives as well.

Perhaps the best of all post-Atkins dietary worlds would include just this kind of non-theory that focuses on balance, healthy whole foods, and proven observational approach to address our persistent dietary dilemmas.