I think the primary message of the Atkins diet, limiting processed sugars and starchy foods, is a good one. For millions of years our ancestors were hunter/gatherers and the only sugar they came across was a little honey and a few fruits as most of their dailey calories came from animal protiens and fats (consider the diet of the pre-Columbian plains tribes of Native Americans). This early lifestyle molded our evolution and shaped our bodies so that we effeciantly converted the small amounts of natural sugars and starches we got into fats for future use in stressful situations. Agriculture is very new, perhaps 10,000 years at the earliest (and even then many cultures never developed agriculture until these products were introduced by modern trade very recently) so we have not had time to evolve effective biological coping mechanisms for the high carb diet resulting from agricultural production.
Processed sugar is a poison made possible by refining plant sugars into nutritionless and addictive toxins which we consume in unnaturally large amounts every day which was simply not possible even a few hundred years ago. Sugar is killing us because our bodies are not built for this type of fuel. Atkins simply advocates returning to a more natural balance of plant carbs and animal fats and protiens without the processed sugar because our ancestors evolved to eat such a diet and never came in contact with the processed sugars that are killing us. You only severly cut back on all carbs at the beginning of the diet in order to loose fat. After you have your weight under control you can return to small amounts of naturally occuring carbs with reasonable and natural amounts of animal protien and fats returning our bodies to the type of foods it evolved to eat.
Small amounts of seeds, whole grains, nuts, green veggies, and fruit are part of a natural human diet as is animal protien and fats. Cutting back on the unnatural high carb diet the wacko vegitarian/animal rights propaganda pushes will lead to better health because a vegitarian lifestyle was simply not possible for the majority of pre-agricultural cultures from which we developed over millions of years. Despite the politcally correct utopian myths about our past the vast majority of humanity had only one dependable source of food for millions of years, and that primary food was the flesh and fat of other animals which had evolved to effeciently digest plant nutrients at a level far beyond human capabilities. This is why Atkins makes sense.
Edited by - Liberty on 26 December 2002 10:8:27