CARB UNLOADING: IS PASSING THE MEAT AND PASSING UP ANOTHER FOOD GROUP THE ANSWER?

Rocky Mountain News
By Marty Meitus and Bill Scanlon
February 4, 2004

All the right conditions have converged into a major low-carb storm.

What everyone thought would be a short-term fad has taken over restaurants and grocery stores as low-carb menus and products flood the market.

Say the words "I'm on Atkins" or "I'm on South Beach" and any diner knows to pass the steak.
Dietitian Liz Marr says the low-carb invasion was triggered when science took a second look at the Atkins diet. "You had this whole scientific community saying, 'Atkins has no science behind it, and we'll prove it,' " Marr says. "Instead, they proved that it's just as effective, at least on a short-term basis, for weight loss, and it doesn't affect cholesterol. "

The late Dr. Robert Atkins' food and vitamin company, Atkins Nutritionals, went into overdrive, with everything from a low-carb ice cream to low-carb cereals. As people found they could lose weight quickly, carbs became public enemy No. 1. Sales of white rice, pasta, breads and high-carb fruit juices have dropped between 2 percent to 5 percent, according to ACNielsen, and manufacturers began formulating low-carb products to pick up the slack.

Julie Gunkel, of Centennial, a paralegal, has been on the South Beach diet for three months. Before going on the diet, she discovered that she was gluten intolerant, "so it wasn't as painful to give up carbs because I had to do it anyway. "

She's lost 8 to 10 pounds on the diet. "I don't know if I can say I really like it, but after the first couple weeks, I didn't miss carbs and it does make you try new things. "

Is this another no-fat, low-fat fad that will run its course? Are all carbs bad?

To sort the wheat from the chaff, we spoke to several experts. They agree that a low-carb diet can be useful for quick weight loss, but they have concerns ranging from the long-term implications of any weight loss program based on a particular food group to a Band-Aid approach to a major problem: obesity in America.

How did we get into this obesity pickle in the first place? The experts will tell you it's a combination of two things - lack of exercise and overeating - plus our constant search for the quick fix, which makes fad diets so appealing.

" We need to cut down on portion size and get active," says Dr. Susan Finn, past president of the American Council on Nutrition and Exercise. "We don't need to be changing hamburger buns for lettuce leaves."
Says Jim Hill, director of the University of Colorado's Center for Human Nutrition: "The problem is not that we're eating the wrong things, it's that we're eating too much of everything."

When Atkins first espoused his low-carb diet in the '70s, there was little science to back it up. However, after the past low-fat, no-fat frenzy, in which people gave up the foods they loved for tasteless replicas, giving up bread for steak didn't seem to be much of a hardship. Science also began to catch up with Atkins, suggesting there was something to this low-carb plan and that it was not a formula for an instant heart attack.

Part of the issue with carbs and weight loss is how quickly carbs are broken down and absorbed in the bloodstream.

This is where the idea of "good carbs" versus "bad carbs" comes in. Some carbs are absorbed quickly; others are absorbed more slowly. Whole-grain foods are absorbed more slowly than processed carbs. Brown rice, for instance, takes longer to digest than white rice and that's exactly what you want. That keeps the body's chemistry consistent throughout the day, staving off sluggish feelings and cravings for more food.

A low-carb diet is no different from any other in terms of its basic premise. "It still boils down to calories," Marr says. "When you're on a restricted diet and you're watching your weight, you're restricting calories."

Says Metropolitan State College of Denver nutrition professor Jennifer Weddig: "If you sit down to bacon and eggs at breakfast, have a half a can of nuts, then eat cheese and meat for lunch, steak and broccoli with butter and cheese for dinner, you're going to have as many calories as any other meal pattern."

The National Academy of Sciences says we need a minimum of 130 grams of carbs a day, roughly two bagels or 520 calories, says Jackie Berning, University of Colorado professor and consultant to the Denver Broncos. Low-carb diets severely restrict carbs in the beginning, forcing the body to use other sources, such as fat, for energy, causing quick weight loss.

Because of the restrictions, Berning believes most people feel tired by the end of the day. "When you lose weight, you have the euphoria of losing weight, and if you ask, people will say, 'I feel great.' Ask them at 3 o'clock, when their heads are down on the desk and they're taking a nap because their central nervous system has shut down."

Berning favors controlling portions and eating moderately from every food group, and you won't find disagreements from other experts. Yes, spinach pasta and whole-wheat pasta are better than regular pasta, says Nancy Hof, a dietitian at Avista Hospital in Louisville, "but it really boils down to portion size or what you're adding to it. Are you adding a lot of green sauces or fat or cheese? A low-carb diet doesn't mean a healthy diet."

The opposite also is true, says Berning. "I think you can overload on carbs. When you eat a bagel the size of a spare tire, that's four servings, and you're not going to lose weight. It's not the bagel, it's that you put more calories in than you expended."

There are no FDA standards defining low-carb, which has opened the way for the next phase of the low-carb craze: grocery store shelves full of products touting their carb content. The key phrase has become "net carbs," which manufacturers calculate by taking total carbohydrates and subtracting the dietary fiber and sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol, the sweetener in many diet candies and gums. (Manufacturers say sugar alcohols should be excluded because they're absorbed slowly or not at all; others, including Jim Hill, disagree.)

To lower the carbs, products such as Rudi's breads, which Marr represents, have upped the fiber content, which dietitians agree is a good thing. The problem is that low-carb doesn't necessarily mean low-calorie, which leads to the "if it's low-carb, I can eat as much as I want" line of thinking.

Berning doesn't believe that a sustained low-carb diet is good for long-term health because low-carb also doesn't mean low-fat. "If you pick these low-carb options, saturated fat is going to make a difference in your cardiovascular disease. We have 40 years of studies to prove this."

Julie Gunkel says she could sustain the diet in the long term - "in a modified form," she says. "It teaches you the difference between good and bad carbs. "