Is Atkins Diet changing Economy ? (I kid you not)

[RamboLiberal]

I can see where this could really hurt the environment as well - i.e. raising more cattle/pigs. Comments.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=104

When Unilever PLC, the British food giant that owns Slim-Fast Foods, announced in July that U.S. profits had dropped 23 percent, it quickly pointed an accusing finger at the Atkins diet, the trendy weight-loss plan high in protein and low in carbohydrates. Atkins, Unilever’s chairman explained, has set off shock waves in consumption that have cut Slim-Fast’s profits, and there’s no way to fight a fad.

SUDDENLY, WALL STREET is blaming the diet craze for all sorts of economic upheavals, and the deafening buzz is almost enough to drown out economic sense. Time, the Economist, USA Today, and countless media outlets — marveling at the idea of slimming pork chops and heavy cream — have touted the commercial impact of the Atkins plan. The diet has been blamed for falling wheat prices and booming beef sales.

But is there really an Atkins economy?

Three months ago, the British Federation of Bakers made headlines when it announced that bread sales have declined 2 percent per year since Dr. Atkins’ book was re-released in 1997. Wheat consumption has dropped from 147 pounds per person to 139 pounds in the past six years. And in May, the Tortilla Industry Association held a high-profile seminar titled “An Industry in Crisis: The High-Protein, Low-Carb Diet and Its Effects on the Tortilla Industry.”

Atkins-friendly foods, on the other hand, are booming. News reports have credited Atkins for an increase in U.S. beef sales in 12 of the past 14 quarters. Prices on cattle futures have climbed from 65 cents per pound in 2001 to 82 cents per pound today (suggesting the beef market has grown by $3 billion in 3 years). Consumption of bacon and eggs are at 10-year highs. Beef jerky sales are up more than 40 percent in the past two years, and pork-rinds have tripled their market share to $496 million per year.

[KamaAina]

1. We will soon be living off the fat of the land

(groan)

:evilgrin:

[InkAddict]

17. Can't wait to pinch (real hard) my inch

from that 1% at the top - the ones w/the fat between the ears.

[jumptheshadow]

2. Seen in a local Italian restaurant

Homemade low-carb pasta.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. Well, you eat tons of greens on the Atkins diet

so farmers should be doing well also. When you get to the maintenance stage, grains are allowed, with particular emphasis on whole grains. Fruit is also allowed.

What about the fish industry? That's where most of my protein comes from.

[klyon]

20. that is right

so the junk food people go down and we switch from wheat to cattle feed, spend some on keeping the environment clean and the economy goes on but in another direction and the people are heathier. Sounds good to me.

There is also the latest study that says walking is good, should sell more shoes (made overseas).

People will spend it if they got it and if they don't.

KL

May you be well, live well, work well; have courage, patience, and compassion.

[hang a left]

4. I have been on and off Atkins for years.

Absolutely wonderful diet, you feel good, have great energy, you lose weight, you don't go hungry, and in spite of all the nutritionalists and others promoting the FDA pyramid, it is very very healthy.

My problem is sugar, love sugar, cookies, cake, ice cream, breads, I am an addict. But despite their claims, it is not a fad diet and is here to stay.

[rooboy]

5. I'd be surprised if there was...

but the genre of high protein diets combined might me having an effect.

The Atkins diet is not a high protein diet, but is rather a 60% fat diet. I'm on it, and can tell you that I probably spend as much money on dairy products as I do meat. Furthermore, the high fat content means that it's often wiser to buy the cheaper cuts of meat. I barely eat more meat than a person on a normal diet.

High meat prices down here in Australia are also associated with problems stemming from drought, leaving farmers with a situation of having to wait until stock breed up again.

[hippywife]

6. The Atkins Diet is nothing new

My doc placed me on his diet (I think back them they called it The Atkins Super Protein Diet) 20 years ago. It worked really well. I stayed on it for several months and did lose weight. However, I have been developing uric acid kidney stones at the rate of one every year and a half ever since. :grr: :grr:

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone!! If you use a little common sense, it is easy to see that a diet based so heavily on protein is not good for you in the long haul.

[hang a left]

8. It is exremely healthy.

Lowers choleseterol(sp), blood pressure, controls blood sugar ect...... I don't think that the stones are the cause of Atkins. Atkins is meat and veggies in the beginning. You can tell it is healthy just by the way you feel.

[hippywife]

10. Really?

There has never been a history of stones in my family, I never had them before the diet, and people who suffer from uric acid kidney stones are put on a protein restrictive diet. The formulation of uric acid stones is a form of gout.

I felt good too while I was on the diet because I was losing weight. It's the long term effects that need to be considered.

[hang a left]

12. well i am not a physician

I have just read alot about the diet. I have never heard of any negative physical effects, I could be wrong.

[hippywife]

14. Me, either.

But I know the progression of what happened. It also happened to my dad who did the diet with me and didn't start having them until afterwards. It may not happen to everyone but if you've ever had even one kidney stone in your life, let alone several, you would know it's not worth the risk.

[MattBaggins]

15. "If you use se a little common sense,

t is easy to see that a diet based so heavily on protein is not good for you in the long haul."

Thanks but I prefer to apply the scientific method to real world data.

[hippywife]

19. And how many times

do they release new findings of the "scientific data" that totally negate the previous findings?

The common sense approach of cutting calories first by reducing serving size and watching the intake of too much of one type of food always seems to come up again and again as the best approach.

[AP]

7. Dianne Rehm did a totally obsequious show on Atkins's diet plan...

...it was so obvious that it was just a big effor to sell a lot of beef and fast food. The subtext was all politics. And then, if you tried to talk about it here, man, the food-freepers came out of the woodwork. I'm sure that whatever industry benefits from Atkins was paying people to go around the internet and defend it. It was crazy!!!!

[hang a left]

13. Actually think about it a minute

and look at the FDA pyramid. Walk down the ailes of your supermarket, what do you see. Nothing but carbohydrates, until you get to the meat and the veggies. What do you think the impact would be on the food industry if all of the sudden the FDA came out and said "well ya know Dr. A was right." His diet was ridiculed for years and years and years. Now all of a sudden you have lots of scientists, dieticians, doctors, studies, coming out and saying that there is something to the low carb. My husband after 4 months on Atkins no longer needed his high blood pressure meds. and by the way had lost 35 lbs.

[spooky3]

9. Did it ever occur to PLC that Slim-fast

1. Doesn't work (see studies described in Consumer Reports, for example). People may be able to stick to it for awhile but then quickly regain everything back.
2. It tastes vile.

[musiclawyer]

11. The blood type diet is better for you

I'm not quaklified to discuss the economic ramifications, but I can tell you that the blood type diet does basically the same thing as Atkins, especially for type O people, without a lot of the long term danger associated with Atkins--this according to two MDs that I know and trust. The point being-- the majority of humans are not engineered by nature to eat a dairy, gluten, caffeine and cane sugar long term. These things are very detrimental to a lot of people, not all, but many. Be careful out there and read your labels, all of them.

[Deja Q]

18. Dunno (the link is semi-pertinent to Atkins followers, too)

I'm type O-. And my diet is heavy in wheat products. Why aren't I dead?

http://www.earthsave.org/news/bloodtyp.htm

Here's a bit the Atkins followers won't like to read:


Repeatedly packing the colon full of meat residue from a high protein diet has been shown to be highly correlated with cancer of the colon - among the leading killers of industrial nations (4). In fact, animal protein seems to be "high octane fuel" for the growth of many kinds of cancers (5). I fear that the apparent improvement experienced by many people who use the "zone" rationale to become big-time carnivores will ultimately be at the cost of damaged vital organs and more lethal and degenerative diseases.

[Deja Q]

16. Whinge, whinge, whinge

One scheming corporation loses profits to a competitor and they whinge "unfair, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Makes me proud to be a capitalist... :eyes: </sarcasm>

Given that one serving of Slim-fast contains something like 30 grams of sugar (!!!), I'm amazed people have lost even a single pound. I didn't lose an ounce on their ripoff plan.

I feel sorry for the wheat folks; grains are healthy if you know which ones to get. The Asian peoples' diets do contain grain and they're not nearly as obese as Americans (probably because their grains haven't been bleached and processed to remove the goodness out of them...). Grain, in proper amounts, is good. Contains fiber too. (now Taystee and Wonder bread, any white bread, white rice, and anything that isn't whole-grain or is mega-processed and bleached is just as worthwhile as any other junk food however and should be avoided because that WILL lead to obesity! Whole-grain bread and whole-grain brown rice are legit.)

Now onto the foods that the Atkins diet requires us to eat:

I sure as hell won't eat beef. Not ever, ever again. I feel bad for going to Burger Slop fast food joint a month ago to eat a big burger. :-( If it takes up to 30 years for Mad-Cow Disease to affect a human who eats up a cow that ate bits of other cows... They can go out of business too for their acts against the laws of nature and God. Cannibalism is wrong and for ages we've seen its effects on those who engage in it. So why did corporate america start doing it? Seemed less expensive to grind up a cow's dead bits to feed other cows with than to find proper food sources... As usual, when people do things for the pursuit of greater wealth, everybody else suffers as a result.

Lord (or The Ultimate Being) only knows if pigs are fed dead bits of pigs, and chickens dead bits of chickens. :scared:

But that doesn't matter because all the vegetables, fruits, and grains of recent were all genetically modified anyway to reduce pests; we guinea pigs won't know what'll happen to us for the next few years, that's for sure. Purportedly, GM foods don't need as many pesticides sprayed onto them. That's undeniably good. But how did the scientists figure out that their ungodly acts won't hurt we consumers in the long run?

The key is more exercise and less stress and a reasonable, BALANCED diet. However, these concepts are the sheer antithesis of the lifestyle corporate america has bestowed upon us, mainly so that these flim-flam diet companies like Slim-fast et al can prosper at our needless expense. :eyes:

(note my use of "ungodly", "against the laws of nature", et al. These same tinkerers better not say the same of homosexual acts. :eyes: (Being gay myself, I get a unique glimpse into how things are run...))

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Actually

Asians eat polished rice, which has very little food value.

Having lived in Japan and visited there several times since, I believe that the overall slenderness of the Japanese is due to two things:

1) More exercise in the course of their daily activities, including a lot of walking and, in some cases, cycling.

2) Eating a wide variety of foods. A traditional meal consists of small servings of several different dishes, including lots of seafood and vegetables and about a fistful of rice. In typical neighborhood restaurants, you can get seconds on rice, but I never saw anyone except teenage boys do so.

Some of their food, such as tempura (deep-fried seafood and vegetables) and tonkatsu (deep-friend pork).

[mike_c]

21. actually, I've wondered about this for some time....

There might not just be an "Atkins economy," but also an Atkins ecology. Folks, despite all the thunder and fury that people wrap their favorite dietary philosophies in, we really don't know much about the consequences of human dietary choices (beyond the obvious, e.g. starvation and malnutrition, with the later fuzzier than we want to admit). The point is that if Atkins was right, and the evidence at this point is not conclusively against him by any means, then it's likely that human population growth has already exceeded the environmental carrying capacity and the health effects of a cheap carbohydrate laden diet are one of the early mainfestations of negative population pressure. It's difficult, if not impossible, to sustain our present population planatary on high quality protein rich diets. If Atkins was correct (and he might very well have been), then we have just recognized a new front in the class warfare between those wealthy enough to afford a high quality diet and those who must simply think in terms of getting enough calories, regardless of their source-- added, of course, to the question of even acquiring sufficient daily calories that plagues a significant proportion of the planetary population already.