Robert Atkins has been dead seven years, yet the mainstream media and those who opposed him in life are not giving up. Last week, the New York Times reported on research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The headline was “Nutrition: Risky Additions to a Low-Carb Diet.” Robert Atkins’s name was in the first sentence. Dean Ornish, a frequent opponent of Robert Atkins in life, keeps the cause alive in his column in the Huffington Post where he serves as its medical editor under the title “Atkins Diet Increases All-Cause Mortality.”
What does the study conclude? That low-carb diets are good for health, but using animal protein and fat is bad.
I want to pause here to point out that it is now common knowledge that low-carb diets are healthiest despite decades of fighting hammer and tongs against Robert Atkins. To this day the words “Robert Atkins was right” will not pass their lips. Instead, we get studies like this.
The study combined two separate studies: 85,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study over a period of 26 years and 45,000 men in the Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study over a period of 20 years. When these folks substituted protein for carbohydrates in following the researcher’s version of a low-carb diet, more died than those on a high carbohydrate, low fat food pyramid diet. However, for those who substituted vegetable protein for carbohydrates, deaths actually declined while deaths increased for those who ate animal protein.
This result is not only insignificant but suspect. Here’s why.
The low-carb dieters had a 12% greater risk of dying compared to food pyramid dieters. However, the vegetable protein eaters among them were 20% less likely to die while the animal protein eaters were 23% more likely to die. These kinds of numbers are a slight of hand that is played in the science and in the mainstream media. What they mean is this. The percentages are comparisons among the people who died, not everybody in the study. So we’re not talking about 23% of the 130,000 people in the combined studies but of the 9,000 meat eaters who died during the study compared to the 11,000 people on a food pyramid diet who died.
The percentages are called relative risk because they’re relative to those who died, not everyone. So compared to 100 of the food pyramid dieters who died, 80 vegetable protein eaters died and 123 animal protein eaters died. In other words, as excited as everybody has gotten about this result, vegetable protein people still died. In fact, more died than didn’t despite the alleged protection of vegetable protein. Only 20 out of 100 were spared. The vegetable protein didn’t do anything for the other 80 people.
To put some other numbers to this, what’s the difference in risk of dying among everyone in the study? A couple percentage points. How many people would have to switch to vegetable protein so that just one of them would not die? Sixty. Of food pyramid eaters who died, sixty would have to switch to a low-carb diet with vegetable protein in order for one of them to be spared. The other 59 meet the same fate whether on a food pyramid diet or vegetable protein low-carb diet. At least that’s what this study’s numbers suggest.
In addition, what counts as animal protein in these studies is usually biased to the point of being a bad joke. In the old days, when everyone was trying to discredit Robert Atkins and the low-carb diet itself, researchers would concoct ludicrous diets that had nothing to do with what Atkins said. The same is true here. For example, processed meats are included with fresh meats. Whenever anyone has teased out the data, processed meat, like any other processed food, is pretty toxic.
While gushing praise on the researchers for the lovely job they’ve done, writers of an editorial that accompanies the study note that, gee, maybe it would be a good idea to see whether there’s a difference between industrial meat and meat from animals that are raised sustainably and ethically—which is a point Atkins made.
My purpose is not to defend Robert Atkins, although I think he deserves more credit and less post mortem flack. My purpose is to point out that many researchers are food partisans and it shows up in their studies and the attention they get in mainstream media outlets. It’s the same poorly designed research that supports the cause of true believers but does nothing to advance actual science.
Here’s a study I’d like to see. Researchers comparing all deaths and illness that result from the production of all protein sources, in particular distinguishing sustainably raised animals from industrial meat. I’d like to know whether it’s the meat itself or the production process. My money is on the production process.
Better yet, instead of obsessively examining what people eat for miniscule differences in the rate at which they die or get sick, why not examine the entire production process for the number of people who suffer ill effects from hormone and antibiotic use in feedlots, grain based diets for animals with stomachs meant to eat grass, the harm done to workers in industrial farms and processing plants, the death and illness due to environmental degradation, and so on. Let’s really look at what’s killing us and making us sick. I guarantee you, it’s not only or even mostly on our plates. It’s in what political economist Ben Fine calls the food system of provision.
And for heaven’s sake, stop beating up Robert Atkins. He’s dead.
