Leith, William (22 page)

A cartoon in the Daily Telegraph depicts a brace of grouse hiding from a man with a shotgun. One of the birds is saying, `I have some very bad news we're recommended as part of the Atkins diet.'

William Bush, an Atkins dieter from Rockford, Illinois, is rushed to hospital with chest pains. He blames the Atkins diet. The Sunday Times points out that Bush had never dieted before. 'It's dangerous,' says Bush. 'I really took to it in a big way. It was like, 'Oh, man, steak and eggs at every meal.'

Audrey Eyton, the author of the F-Plan diet, says, 'The Dr Atkins diet achieves weight loss because it reduces total calorie intake and much of his own explanation for why it works is total hogwash.'

In the Daily Telegraph, the Atkins diet is described as 'the cream, steak, and mayonnaise regime'.

A spokesman for Slimming World, a low-fat diet enterprise, says, 'We would be concerned about any diet that excludes or limits essential food groups such as carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables.'

Real Story, a television documentary strand, follows the progress of three Atkins dieters. A worry about the diet, the narrator tells us, is that it makes you burn lean muscle tissue. This is not true. One of the dieters is Dr Maurice Gleeson, who does Atkins, but also boozes pretty heavily and eats large amounts of chocolate biscuits. Later, he is rushed to hospital

be scientifically attributed to the diet. Meanwhile, corporate giant Unilever, the owner of Slim-Fast diets, reports a 4 per cent decline in sales for the first quarter of 2003. Slim-Fast products, which are based on radically cutting fat, are staying on the shelves; Chairman Niall Fitzgerald admits the slowdown is due to the popularity of the Atkins diet. A company spokesman explains that Unilever had 'taken its eye off the market'.

Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council, damns the Atkins diet, claiming that a diet high in fat and protein, and low in carbohydrates, is a 'major health risk', and based on 'pseudo-science'. Later, it emerges that Jebb accepted a f20,000 grant, on behalf of the MRC, from the Flour Advisory Bureau, the lobbying arm of the National Association of British and Irish Millers.

In America, nutritionists accuse government health officials of issuing 'groundless' warnings against the Atkins diet. Official guidelines drawn up by the Department of Agriculture recommend six to eleven servings of carbohydrates in school and hospital diets, with one serving equivalent to a slice of bread. Senator Peter Fitzgerald says that, 'Putting the Department of Agriculture in charge of dietary guidelines is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.' Harvard Professor Walter Willett adds, 'Looking at some of the recommendations from the Department of Agriculture gives the idea that they've forgotten that we are feeding people, not horses.'

In Britain, as the weather heats up, Dr Sarah Schenker, a dietician working at the British Nutrition Foundation, warns that the Atkins diet may be harmful in hot weather. 'The body

with a blocked bowel. Has the Atkins backlash found its sacrificial victim, its Leah Betts? Not quite. Gleeson survives. When Atkins spokesperson Colette Heimowitz points out that he was not actually doing Atkins, was not following the programme, the Daily Mail publishes an article under the headline 'Cheating on the Atkins can damage your health.'

The media message is becoming crystallized. Atkins works, but might be dangerous. Atkins works, but there is a price to pay. Atkins works, but is unnatural. 'Welcome to the weird world of the Atkins diet,' says the narrator on the BBC's Horizon, 'a world where fat food makes you thin.' Brian, an Atkins dieter, is described as 'sticking to food high in protein and fat'. Green vegetables are barely mentioned. The First Law of Thermodynamics, we are told, 'underpins the cosmos', and is the 'foundation stone of chemistry and physics'. How could Atkins have the temerity to defy it? After all, a university professor points out, there is no such thing as perpetual motion. In which case, how can the Atkins diet possibly work?

Interviewed on television, Susan Jebb tells us that there is no long-term evidence of the effects of low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets, failing to mention the fact that the human race lived on a low-carbohydrate diet for most of its history.

But people are listening to the backlash. The tide appears to be turning against Atkins. Catherine Zeta-Jones, one of the most-cited celebrity Atkins devotees, threatens to sue anybody who links her with the Atkins diet. Her lawyer tells the media, 'According to publications around the world, the Atkins diet has been derided by nutritionists and other health officials for decades. By stating that Ms Zeta-Jones uses and/or endorses the Atkins diet, those publications are falsely representing to the average reader, including many young women who look up to my client and admire her beautiful appearance that Ms Zeta-Jones would recommend this diet to any person looking to lose weight.'

The lawyer continued, 'My client is being made to look as if she is more concerned about her outward appearance than she is with serious health concerns. Nothing could be further from the truth.' The statement came a few days after Zeta-Jones and her husband, Michael Douglas, were awarded damages against a celebrity magazine for publishing unauthorized pictures of her wedding. She sued partly because she claimed the pictures made her look fat.

I get an impression people think Atkins was too good to be true'that he was a snake-oil merchant. People absorb this notion with what appears to be a sense of relief. Maybe the truth is that, at heart, we are disturbed and disorientated by a diet that works; it upsets the natural order. We don't want diets to work in the same way that we don't want facelifts to work. Time marches on. Calories make you fat. If you overindulge, you must pay the price. These are the simple truths we live by.

At last, a mini-scandal. Colette Heimowitz, speaking on behalf of Atkins, says Atkins dieters are not recommended to eat large amounts of fat. The media pounces. The story is: even the Atkins organization is anti-Atkins. 'The diet,' says the Sun newspaper, `was designed to let followers feast on fatty foods. But now Colette Heimowitz, the director of research and education for company Atkins Nutritionals, has told dieters to cut back on saturated fat.'

`Good evening,' says Sir Trevor McDonald, standard-bearer of sensible thinking and host of Tonight. 'It always did seem just too good to be true. The Atkins diet told us you could eat fat and get thin. But last week, the organization came forward with a bombshell announcement that too much fat could be bad for you.'

A Cooked Breakfast

An editor at the Evening Standard calls me and asks me to write, as an Atkins dieter, about the Atkins backlash. A photographer is arranged. I speak to a woman at the picture desk. 'We'll just want a picture of you and a plate of bacon and eggs,' she says.

`Yes, but this is not about bacon and eggs. What I'll be saying is that Atkins is not all bacon and eggs, steak and so on . .

`Fine. Well, you just tell the photographer about it.'

When he arrives, the photographer says, 'I just want a picture of you sitting over a plate of bacon and eggs, sausages, full English breakfast sort of thing.'

`Ah yes. I talked to the picture desk about this. What I'll be saying in the article, you see, is that Atkins is not just about bacon and eggs and sausages.'

`It's not?'

`No. It's about the avoidance of too much carbohydrate.'

`But you eat lots of bacon and eggs, don't you, on Atkins?'

`No. Well, some people do. But that's not what it's about.'

We walk to a local cafe. The photographer negotiates a

compromise; I will be depicted over a plate of bacon, sausages

and eggs, but I will be frowning, as if to say that I do not like

them.

,You can make a face,' says the photographer.

The bacon and eggs arrive. I am in the position of being hungry, and on Atkins, but unable, for tactical reasons, to eat bacon or eggs. I am making a political statement. In any case, I cannot eat the bacon or the eggs, because they are part of my photographic backdrop. The bacon and the eggs will stand on the table; I will sneer at them. But what about afterwards? Would it be possible to eat the bacon and eggs then? Nobody would notice. Yes, they would. The photographer would notice. I must remain pure I must sneer at the bacon and the eggs, to make my point.

The session begins. The photographer says, 'Can I just get a couple of you sitting normally?'

`Not making a face?'

`Right.'

The photographer snaps away.

`Shall I start making faces now?'

`OK.'

I hunch over the bacon and eggs, sneering and scowling. I try to appear disdainful of the bacon and eggs, scornful, sickened. I shrink theatrically away from the bacon and eggs.

`You could, like, make your knife and fork into a cross.' `A cross?'

`You know, like in Dracula. As if you're warding off evil spirits.'

For a while, I am Van Helsing, warding off the evil spirits of the bacon and eggs. The photographer shoots hundreds of frames. The cafe is beginning to fill up.

`You hate them.'

`I hate them.'

`Good. Lovely.'

`They are evil.'

`Great. Great.'

`I curse you!'

`Perfect.'

The session ends. I am hungry. The photographer says, 'I'm hungry. I could do with some of this food. You don't want it, do you?'

`No, no. You have it.'

`Do you mind?'

`Not at all.'

In the meantime, I formulate a plan. I will wait until the photographer has gone, and then I'll order some bacon and eggs for myself.

In the article, I write, slightly self-righteously, 'As an Atkins dieter, or at least as someone who tries to limit my intake of bread, pasta, rice, cakes, and biscuits, I'm used to scare stories. Almost every television programme or newspaper article on the subject tells me the Atkins regime is bad. Recently, I watched a documentary telling, me the Atkins diet was "against fruit and vegetables". People often ask me if I'm worried that I might give myself a heart attack. But actually, I don't think that avoiding fries, mashed potato, bagels, croissants and chocolate is likely to give me a heart attack.'

`This diet,' I explain, 'is not just about eating bacon, sausages and steak. It's about avoiding too much carbohydrate.'

The article appears the next day, illustrated with a picture of me sitting over a big plateful of bacon and eggs. I am not scowling. I am not sneering. I am not warding off the bacon

with my cutlery-cross. It is one of the early pictures. I and eggs I

look as if I love the bacon and eggs, as if I want the bacon and eggs. Ina way, it is a true picture, because I did want the bacon and eggs. But I am disappointed. I wanted to look as if I did not want the bacon and eggs.

The picture is captioned, 'Chewing the fat: writer William Leith tucks into what is considered to be a typical Atkins meal a cooked breakfast.'

The Sacrificial Victim

During the Ecstasy panic in the British media in the 1990s, Ecstasy took on a new meaning. In reports, it was no longer merely a drug, but a super-drug, a killer drug. It was the product of pure evil. If somebody died of a heroin overdose, he or she might be reported in the papers if there was something very peculiar or newsworthy about the incident if the victim was the progeny of a peer or a top politician, for instance. But Ecstasy was different. All you had to do, to get on the front page, was take Ecstasy and lose consciousness.

i Reading the reports, one sensed a huge gathering force, a primitive need for bad news. Certainly, people took Ecstasy and died occasionally, but mostly when the drug was taken in combination with other drugs. And yet reporters routinely gave us the impression that Ecstasy was the most dangerous

drug in the world.

What the media craved was a sacrificial victim, and several attempts were made to create one. Ecstasy victims were granted column inches according to their youth, their looks, their gender, their academic promise, and the class status of their parents. When Leah Betts, who was a teenager, a pretty girl, a bright student, and the daughter of a policeman, died after taking an Ecstasy tablet her first, it was suggested editors knew that this was their moment. This was the best they were going to get, and they ran story after story, and a charity was organized, and huge posters were printed with a picture of Leah's girlish face, taken years before her death, and for months newspaper headlines bristled with the story.

Now, at the heart of the Atkins backlash, a similar search for bad news is in progress. Atkins dieters, we are told, are 'at risk of a sharp rise in cholesterol', and the Atkins diet 'could cut chances of pregnancy'. When Rachel Huskey, a 230-lb 16-year-old from Missouri, dies of heart disease after six weeks on the Atkins diet, there is a flurry of headlines:

DID THE ATKINS DIET KILL THIS GIRL?

And: ATKINS ALARM

And: NEW ALARM OVER ATKINS DIET

And: ATKINS DIET CAN TRIGGER DISEASES And: ATKINS DANGER 'OFFICIAL'

Rachel's mother, Lisa, was wary, on behalf of her daughter, of 'crash diets', but, 'after reading reports about Atkins' before the backlash, of course she 'allowed her to go on it'. Huskey did Atkins, reportedly complained of nausea, lost 15 lbs in six weeks, and collapsed during a school history lesson. The coroner's report ruled that the cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia. Lisa Huskey blames the Atkins diet, and says, 'I

want people to know you can die doing something as stupid as this.'

But Rachel, for whatever reason, does not have what it takes to be the media's sacrificial victim. She was obese. She died of heart disease. The media want something more.

They get what they want when Neal Barnard, a vegetarian activist who once said, 'Meat consumption is just as dangerous to public health as tobacco use,' publishes the New York City medical examiner's report on Atkins' death. Barnard was sent the report by Richard Fleming, an anti-Atkins cardiologist, who simply wrote to the authorities requesting it. What the report says is that Atkins had a myocardial infarction, hypertension, and congestive heart failure typical conditions, one might say, for a 72-year-old American whose father also suffered from congestive heart failure.