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HolsumAZ.com > Healthy Living > Health News
Source: Tufts Nutrition Health & Nutrition Letter, May 2004
A publication of Tufts University, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science
May 17, 2004 - It is never a good sign when a weight-loss plan promises that you won't "suffer any hunger pangs" and that your cravings, especially for foods like sweets and baked goods, "will virtually disappear" within the first week. But it sure does seem to help a diet book leapfrog to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Enter The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss, by Arthur Agatston, M.D. Tufts University researchers combed the book cover to cover, allowing for the possibility that the hype used to attract buyers might belie a healthful, scientifically grounded weight-loss plan within. But that was not to be the case. Disappointingly, the South Beach Diet is simply yet another version of a fad wrapped within a gimmick.
The fad here is the low-carb craze; the gimmick, the fact that this particular incarnation of low-carb is not high in saturated fat, like the Atkins plan. That is certainly a good adjustment. But like all too many popular diet books, this one is replete with faulty science, glaring nutrition inaccuracies, contradictions, and claims of scientific evidence minus the actual evidence. The premise of the book is that many foods high in carbohydrates send blood sugar soaring too high too fast, which then gets the hormone insulin in gear to take sugar out of the bloodstream. But the insulin overshoots its mark, causing blood sugar to plunge and leading to reactive hypoglycemia, which in turn produces feelings of incredible hunger and cravings for more carbs that keep the vicious cycle going.
There's just one problem. Unless you have diabetes, blood sugar remains in a remarkably stable range. Research that has looked at this issue simply has not linked relatively low blood sugar to hunger. Some other inconsistencies in the book, for example, are on pages 13 and 27, where the book says that the diet is "distinguished by the absence of calorie counts … or even rules about portion size," then proceeds to count calories and measure out servings every step of the way. Then there are the out-and-out food and nutrition inaccuracies. One is that whole wheat bread is not whole grain. (It is. Wheat is a grain, and if it's whole, it's whole grain.)
Like a lot of other weight-loss books, The South Beach Diet says the program "has been scientifically studied" and "proven effective," then offers up not a single reference in a scientific journal.
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