For now, deceit beats meat Food industry and stock-market analysts have been predicting for months now that sales of low-carbohydrate foods would decline, but I guess I didn't really believe it. I figured that the thousands of tons of weight that millions of Americans have lost in the last few years by adopting protein-and-fat-based diets would elevate this closest-to-nature nutritional approach above the status of a temporary trend. I may have been wrong, it seems. A recent AP story clams that just 2% of American adults are currently still on some form of low-carbohydrate eating plan. And just weeks ago, Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the company founded by the late Dr. Robert C. Atkins, my pioneering colleague and fellow champion of carnivores everywhere, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in its home state of New York. Citing slumping demand for low-carbohydrate products and other reasons, the company once blamed for bankrupting bakeries and pasta joints (not to mention Twinkie-maker Hostess), is now struggling for survival itself. If you ask me, however, the company's failure isn't due simply to the whims of public opinion or the natural ebb and flow of the marketplace, but by a concerted effort on the part of the media, the medical establishment, and the government to manipulate that marketplace with one goal in mind: Assassination of the low-carb movement by a conspiracy of deceit. Need evidence? Consider: Since the onset of the low-carb revolution (which began decades ago, but only gained widespread exposure in the last 3 years or so), the meat-hating mainstream media has consistently characterized the movement as a "fad" or "craze" instead of the sound, life-long, nutritionally balanced eating plan it is. Even when they've been forced to publicize snippets from among the reams of science supporting the low-carb approach, they've clouded their broadcasts and reports with dissenting opinions from the hopelessly biased food industry and government. And when Dr. Atkins died in April 2003, they intentionally misrepresented his condition to make him seem grossly overweight as a result of his diet (See Daily Dose, 3/5/2004 and 9/14/2004 for the whole disturbing scoop on this). The government's obesity-breeding "Food Pyramid" is almost laughably grain-heavy in its recommendations. That's because it's clearly nothing more than a device created to stimulate and maintain demand for corn, wheat and soy (the bean that is over sexing girls and under sexing boys - not a good thing), reducing the amount of subsidies the government has to pay to farmers under the dictates of some other long-ago pork-barrel sweetheart deal crafted by a corrupt Congress and paid for perennially by you and me. It's also a bone thrown to the hugely profitable (and tax-revenue generating, by the way) refined foods industry. For the Feds, it's a moneymaker in two ways! The medical establishment increasingly has its agenda issued to it by the ever-more-powerful drug makers. Their carefully structured studies and billions-per-year budgets aimed at "educating" doctors ensure that every possible patient gets his share of top-selling cholesterol drugs. But since high-protein, low-carb diets actually lower harmful cholesterol dramatically (and the drug makers know it), they of course throw their full might and main into making sure doctors promote the least heart-healthy nutrition they can to go with their drugs: The government- sanctified low-fat Food Pyramid. Think about it: It wouldn't make sense for drug makers to promote a diet that negatively impacts their bottom line - that's why their condemnation of the low-carb, fatty diets makes perfect sense.
There's more, keep reading… **************************************************** As terrible as this is to say, it's almost better that Dr. Atkins passed away at the peak of his movement's success. Seeing it the way it is today, brought low by the machinations of a corrupt establishment, might've killed him. Many in the mainstream will no doubt focus on the bankruptcy of Atkins, Inc. and the dwindling ranks of low-carb eaters as an indication of the end of just another dietary craze. But to me, these events signify the suppression by force of a grassroots alternative health movement that bucked the coordinated efforts of a powerful, thoroughly corrupt mainstream for years. Even if I weren't a doctor, and even if I hadn't made it my business to review all the evidence on both sides of this argument for the last 30 years, this fact alone tells me that the low-carbohydrate nutritional approach is the right one for a long and healthy life… After all, anything the revenue-hungry government, the drug-tied medical establishment, and the animal-rights obsessed media are united against simply HAS to be right! Indeed, as bad as the modern vegetable- and sugar-fueled obesity epidemic has become, I wonder how much worse it would be right now were it not for the last 3 years of the low-carb "craze" factoring into the averages. I wonder how exponentially worse it'll get in the next 3 years, if the meat-phobic mainstream has its way. Recognizing deceit - but never defeat, William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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