There's a whole lot of bickering going on over the effectiveness and potential dangers of low-carb diets, but the participants in this fight aren't concerned about your health: they're concerned about their profits. Ever since the popularity of the Atkins Diet and South Beach Diet, Americans are avoiding orange juice, soft drinks, breads and other refined carbohydrates in record numbers. And while that's a smart choice in terms of protecting public health, the manufacturers of soft drinks, orange juice, pasta, breads and other foods made with refined carbohydrates aren't too happy about it.
So they're attacking the Atkins Diet in an effort to get this "fad" out of the picture and, hopefully, get people to return to their old disease-promoting eating habits that include white bread, soft drinks, added sugars, lots of pasta, and so on. See, it's really a war over profits, not over your health.
The funny thing is that foes of the Atkins Diet have a few good points: eating unlimited quantities of saturated fat in products like bacon and cheese is terrible nutritional advice. But the Atkins Food Guide Pyramid doesn't really recommend that in the first place. The Atkins Food Guide Pyramid, in fact, is the healthiest food guide I've seen yet: it's far healthier than the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, which seems to serve as little more than a marketing brochure for grain farmers.
But I agree that the Atkins Diet can be extremely unhealthy when abused by people who are just looking for a magic bullet solution rather than making the more responsible decision to choose healthful foods for the rest of their lives. That's why I literally wrote the book on the dangers of the Atkins Diet: Low-Carb Diet Warning, which you can read free of charge.
The answer to all this, by the way, is that both groups are right: Atkins is right about avoiding processed carbohydrates and refined sugars. Opponents are right about avoiding unlimited quantities of saturated animal fat. So what's the final answer? Eat unrefined foods only. Avoid all processed foods, and you'll be healthy. I call it the Unrefined Foods Diet, and it's the only diet that really keeps you healthy. Food manufacturers, of course, hate it, since the Unrefined Foods Diet demands that you purchase and consume absolutely no manufactured or processed foods whatsoever, and that's exactly where the profits are generated by food manufacturers.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, and he has created several downloadable courses on survival and preparedness, including his widely-downloaded course on personal safety and self-defense. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Sunday, July 18, 2004
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