theomnivore.com has a delightful take on the lawsuit by Jody Gorran against Atkins. (There is an official response to the Gorran lawsuit at Atkins.com.) My thoughts? Read on.
I confess to being really skeptical about this from the start. Here are some excerpts from the CNN article about the lawsuit:
Gorran, 53, said Thursday he started the diet in May 2001 because his weight had risen from 140 to 148 pounds.
Ok, already I’m skeptical. 8 pounds? He was so concerned about 8 pounds that he decided to change his way of eating to something radically different, to a plan known for leading to major weight loss? Sounds a bit suspicious to me. I think if I were that in tune with my body, I might consider just getting a little more exercise. I was way overweight when I decided to start Atkins (almost 250 pounds, now down to about 190/195 since January).
In two months, he said, his cholesterol rose from a normal 146 to an unhealthy 230, and by October 2003, he needed heart angioplasty to clear his arteries.
I assume he has some documentation to back this up. My first question is “When was it 146? Was it right before he started Atkins, or was it some time in the past?” 230 doesn’t sound high enough to require surgery, did it continue to go higher? If he thought it was caused by Atkins, why did he continue eating that way? Didn’t his doctor recommend he go on medication first, to see if it could go down? 230 is high, but not astronomically high. Did he make any modifications to his way of eating? Did he try any of the options in the book for folks who have cholesterol issues? Or was he following a plan designed to get his cholesterol up to a high level to generate a story and a lawsuit?
Here is where it really gets strange:
“For 2 1/2 years, I extolled the virtues of this diet to anyone who listened because I was losing weight and I felt great. But when I started, I had no idea I was making a deal with the devil for trying to keep a 32-inch waistline,” he said.
Whoa. Wait a sec. He started in May 2001 and says he needed angioplasty by October 2003. That’s roughly 2.5 years. He says he was extolling the virtues of Atkins for 2.5 years, but 2.5 years after he started it he was supposedly having angioplasty, and that 2 months after he started he had what he called severe cholesterol problems.
What kind of an idiot is this? Apparently not only did he keep following a way of eating that he claims was harming him for 2.5 years until he needed angioplasty (doesn’t sound too smart to me), but not only that but was extolling the virtues of Atkins all the way to the hospital? Um, duh? Come on, people, that doesn’t even make sense!!!! Sounds like he’s either lying (he wasn’t really telling people how great Atkins was for as long as he says he was) or stupid (he believed it was hurting his health but kept telling people it was great).
As if that wasn’t enough, Gorran says that he ate cheesecake 3 times a week. Um, what? (Read that article and see that there are some questions about how Gorran is interpreting the book and what parts he might have overlooked.) Yup, check Google if you don’t believe me. That doesn’t sound low-carb to me. Which, of course, leads to the next question, how do we know what he was eating that whole time? Seems pretty impossible to prove in a court of law.
All of this doesn’t even start to address the issue of what his cholesterol ratios are (which many are starting to believe is more important than any one number), or what the VLDL rate is, or the controversy over whether cholesterol is really a contributing factor of heart disease or not.
Some have rightly asked whether this is just another example of the disturbing lack of personal responsibility in this country. We are lawsuit-laded. Any diet/exercise program has potential risks. If I start running and develop shin splints, can I sue whoever told me to get more exercise? I’ve tried to walk on the treadmill regularly and get blisters, who can I sue?
When people have talked with me about my decision to eat low-carb, I have told them that I read the book, thought that it made sense given the family history of diabetes, and it worked for me. I’ve also said that it might not be for everyone (because I don’t believe there is one right medical solution for 100% of the population). That doesn’t change the fact that I think the vast majority of the folks who are overweight could control their weight better by following low-carb than low-fat, because low-fat seems to be based on a regimine of being hungry all the time, and I just don’t think that is a viable long-term way of living or eating.
Oh, and it bears repeating that the the so-called “Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine” is NOT made up of physicians, as its misleading name implies, but instead is a political action group of the organization PETA which wants to ban all meat, fish, dairy and egg products from our plates. These folks are not about you making choices and taking responsibility for your actions, these folks are about pushing a pro-animal agenda that might lead a reasonable person to question whether their feelings about Atkins come more from a medical concern or for their own belief that it is wrong to consume any animal products at all.
“We should not let the real issue, providing people with a scientifically validated nutritional choice in the face of a worldwide obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic, be manipulated by this extremist animal rights vegan group,” Atkins Nutritionals said in a statement.