New Doctor, New Diet, but Still No Cookies
Theories abound as to what has propelled the South Beach diet to the center of the weight-loss universe since the book bearing its name was published in April. Is it the image it conjures, of bikini-clad models picking at tropical fruit salad between sun-drenched photo shoots? Is it the aqua shimmer of the book jacket, as eye-catching as the surf off Ocean Drive?
Or is it that Dr. Arthur Agatston, the cardiologist behind the latest low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet, is on to something?
Dr. Agatston — whose office is not in South Beach, by the way, but the older, tamer neighborhood to its north — is not far from that giant of diet doctors, the late Dr. Robert Atkins, in his belief that refined sugar and white flour are the villains behind the nation’s climbing obesity rate. Like the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet strictly limits bread, potatoes and other carbohydrates, especially during a two-week initiation period, and allows the dieter to eat red meat, eggs and cheese.
But while the Atkins diet allows just about any fatty food that is not also starchy, Dr. Agatston advocates mostly unsaturated fats, like those in olive oil, nuts and oily fish like salmon. Butter is nowhere in the South Beach diet meal plans, nor is bacon or anything fried. The South Beach diet also differs from Atkins in that it allows carbohydrates — though only those high in fiber, like multigrain bread and wild rice.
Dr. Agatston’s premise is that most carbohydrate-rich foods are so processed that they immediately turn to sugar in the body. That, Dr. Agatston says, forces a quick spike in blood sugar and nearly as quick a decline. The spikes lead to more hunger, he says, and — this is the part that many experts dispute — to inevitable weight gain.
“Nobody in the history of man ever ate complex carbohydrates like we have,” Dr. Agatston said last week during an interview squeezed between a photo shoot and a meeting about his new heart-imaging center, set to open in December. He was late to the interview, so his wife, Sari, a lawyer who is helping with publicity, filled the time by talking about how even she, a bread lover, has come to accept whole-wheat pita instead.
The diet revolves around the glycemic index — the amount that a carbohydrate increases sugar in the blood compared with the amount that the same quantity of white bread raises it. The concept of the index as crucial to weight gain or loss has been around since the early 1980′s, when it was used to help people with diabetes choose proper diets. But skeptics — including the American Diabetes Association, which has not endorsed the index — say a food’s glycemic index fluctuates depending on how much is eaten and what other foods are eaten.
Foods with a low glycemic index, like lentils, soy milk and low-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt, do not raise blood sugar as quickly and sharply as high-numbered items like gnocchi, baked potatoes and pretzels.
High-glycemic-index foods cause the body to release a lot of insulin, which quickly lowers the blood sugar again and causes hunger to recur, the theory goes. Those with low indexes break down into sugar more slowly, for longer-term energy.
This article describes a very interesting diet. It seems to have significant rationale. Of course we need good prospective studies to be sure. I would probably pick this over the Atkins’ diet given the information I currently have.
