A BEACH TOO FAR       Richard J B Willis

BUC Health Ministries Director

About this time of the year many people start to plan a trip to the beach.  If it's the South Beach diet, forget it!  There is enough evidence in from around the world to show that either markedly decreasing carbohydrate intake, or dramatically increasing protein has adverse effects on one's health.

There has been time enough for researchers to show that the Atkins Diet – and its more recent successor the South Beach Diet – may encourage short-term weight loss but at the expense of later harm to the various body systems.  The initial weight loss comes from the reduction in calories.  Studies in the US put the average American consumption at about 2,250 calories per day.  Typically the above named diets reduce the intake to around 1450 calories daily – 35 per cent fewer calories – hence the weight-loss.

The dieters do not learn good eating habits for life or, generally, engage in an exercise programme.  During the first 6 months of dieting subjects have reported: constipation; bad breath; headaches; hair loss; and increased menstrual bleeding.  Children placed on the diet by concerned parents have also experienced health problems including calcium oxalate/urate kidney stones, vomiting, missed periods, high cholesterol, and vitamin deficiencies.

Both adult and child dieting has produced 53 per cent urinary calcium excretion thus spelling disaster for later bone health, a fact noted by Australian researchers.  These same investigators also found an increase: in heart arrhythmias [irregular heart beats]; impairment of contractile function of the heart; kidney damage; increased cancer risk; lipid abnormalities; impairment of physical activity; and sudden death (around 60 women died).  To somewhat overcome these effects Atkinson dieters may have to take over 30 pills a day!

The data now in from the China Study confirms that a diet high in complex carbohydrates (carbohydrates that have not been refined as in sugars, flours etc) is the diet that best protects one's health.  That diet is the whole-food vegetarian diet that the Church has advocated for around 150 years, with a minimum of dairy intake.  

China Diet co-ordinator of research, Cornell University's head of nutrition Professor T Colin Campbell, says: 'The South Beach Diet is pitched as being more moderate, easier to follow and safer than Atkins, but from what I can tell, the weight-loss "wolf" has just put on a different set of sheep's clothing.'