Ordinary Gweilo

Unsurprising news from the UK – Atkins Nutritionals UK is closing down.  Cue headlines about "slim pickings" in several newspapers.

As I have mentioned before, I find the Atkins Diet quite fascinating – because it does work, but not exactly in the way that Mr Atkins claimed. My view is that what makes the diet attractive (to some) is that it is easy to understand (and lets you eat things like meat, cheese, butter and cream that are not allowed on other diets), but the reason that so many people have given up on it is also the reason that it works, namely that it severely restricts what you can eat. It’s quite hard to over-eat on Atkins, so of course people lose weight. Surprisingly, this rather obvious conclusion was reported as shock news only yesterday!

The idea behind Atkins Nutritionals was that they could sell food that was permitted under the diet, including low-carb versions of otherwise forbidden food. There are a number of obvious problems with this concept – firstly that it makes the diet more complicated, secondly that it means you can eat more (and hence put on weight), and thirdly that it is expensive. Food that is naturally low in carbohydrate is already available in supermarkets, and if you really want to eat bread and candy bars and other such stuff you really ought to find another diet rather than Atkins.

It also means that rather than associating the Atkins Diet with a maverick doctor who came up with an unconventional eating plan, it is linked with a company that wants to sell you expensive food.

The decline in popularity of the Atkins Diet hasn’t helped, and the other problem for Atkins Nutritionals is that large food companies have jumped on the bandwagon and started selling low-carb products as well. These would be the same people who proudly advertise high-fat products with large text saying 0g Trans Fat.