Dietitian - A Voice of Reason on Low-Carb Versus Low Fat Diets

Dietitian - A Voice of Reason on Low-Carb Versus Low Fat Diets
PLACERVILLE, Calif., Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- While researchers battle itout to prove the risks and benefits of low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diets, the real losers are the millions of overweight and obese people left without a definitive solution to their obesity.

What's no surprise to nutrition experts like Carolyn Classick-Kohn, M.S., R.D., is that after exhaustive comparisons of these diet methods, the only real conclusion has been that health risks like blood cholesterol, triglyceride levels and blood glucose improve as a result of losing weight. This has been shown to happen regardless of diet composition, so it's pretty tough to prove the superiority of any specific weight-loss approach.

One of main reasons Classick-Kohn, a registered dietitian and founder of PersonalDiets.com, doesn't use low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss is that they fail to teach people new eating habits that lead to long-term weight maintenance. "People feel great with the short-term weight loss they experience on carb-restricted diets, but after the thrill is gone, dietitians like myself are left to pick up the pieces and do the hard work of finding a diet people can live with past the first months of dieting. Low-carb diets just don't cut it in the long-run and this has been confirmed by data from the Weight Loss Registry, which tracked 5,000 people who lost weight and kept if off for more than a year." Classick-Kohn is calling for a back-to-basics approach with weight-loss diets. "Let's get back to choosing foods that match individuals' health needs and let's eat them in the right amounts first. Get that right and you won't have to worry about much else," she maintains.

The latest twist to the diet game is the glycemic index, exemplified by diets like South Beach. "The South Beach Diet gets it very right and very wrong at the same time," says Classick-Kohn. "Emphasizing more healthful fats like olive oil is an improvement, but stressing complicated concepts like the glycemic index is confusing to the average dieter," she adds.

Classick-Kohn notes that current popular diets that highlight low-glycemic foods have really dumbed down the concept and have applied it incorrectly to foods people eat. This is a real disservice to the weight-loss client because it leads to restricting healthful foods that may have a high glycemic index by themselves but when eaten with other foods are not a problem. They ignore the way foods behave when eaten in combination -- the way most people eat.

"Pasta behaves differently when eaten with a meat sauce, a salad and a glass of wine," she points out. "Who eats a bowl of plain pasta?" The focus on glycemic index is selling on fear of carbohydrates and not on the real science behind the glycemic index and glycemic load. Not only that, says Classick-Kohn, the average person who has diabetes and is obese who might benefit most from low-glycemic index diets has trouble just counting carbohydrates or figuring out basic serving sizes of foods. "We get many clients that have left the South Beach Diet for this and other reasons."

Classick-Kohn's concerns echo those published in Tufts University's Health & Nutrition Letter, which terms the South Beach Diet "yet another version of a fad wrapped in 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." The newsletter further states that the South Beach book is "replete with faulty science, glaring nutritional inaccuracies, contradictions and claims of scientific evidence minus actual evidence."

Most people really do need help with losing weight -- they need help with menu planning, making food choices and getting the structure of a diet designed for their calorie and health needs. What they don't need are complicated concepts about eating and diets that fail to apply available scientific research in nutrition.

"It appears that popular diets have just become a platform for selling more special packaged bars, drinks and supplements -- the real moneymakers in the diet industry," Classick-Kohn says. "Just scan the local supermarket shelves. It's amazing that all the popular diets like South Beach, Weight Watchers and Atkins have their own food lines, effectively increasing the food supply. The last thing an overweight person needs is another food choice to make."