Now I am a bit conspiracy minded, so this might seem a little out there for some of you.
To me, it seems downright illogical that the mainstream is rebelling against such strong evidence that low carb not only is a workable option for weight management, but works the best by leaps and bounds. It has been proven atkins is effective in curing everything from bad skin to more serious hormonal problems like pcos and diabetes, from mild depression to seizures in children, and of course overweight and obesity. Atkins has been proven in studies against hc to be the more effective woe and is easier to stick with. So, why isn't atkins being touted as the cure it is? If more research needs to be done, why isn't the government pursuing it with the same vigor that seems reserved only for HC diets?

I can't help but feel something is awry. It's no secret the government answers to big industry, especially now with neocon republicans in office; after all, money makes the wheels turn. I feel that something is the grain/prepared food manufacturing corporations.

Think about it. It has been proven in studies, an item which has more in it sells better than an item with "healthy" ingredients, even if they are the same price. The american people vote with their dollars for products with deliver the most quantity for the value, over quality for the value. It would seem in the food industry bigger is better. So, naturally industry is in a perpetual war to invent the next bigger bag of chips and sell it for 1 penny less. Of course, this marketing tactic has a price for us. We all know foods with quality ingredients are more expensive to manufacture, which is why so much of whats on our shelves is nothing more than a base of refined grain, seasoned with cheap flavoring agents like msg and corn syrup. Refined foods are cheap to make and can be sold in large quantities at a relatively low price. Unfortunately, refined foods also make you unhealthy and obese.

Now, I may be daft, but I can't but help think with the BOOMING weight loss industry that many, nay, most people out there care about their health! The fact a booming weight loss industry exists simultaneously with a booming junk and refined food industry seems to fly right in the face of conventional knowledge that the american public doesn't care about their health. If people are conscious of their health, how can they place quantity value at a higher priority? What good is the economy size bag of chips if you are too dead to eat it?

No, the people are not apathetic or indifferent, they are ignorant regarding what is nutritionally sound for them. If they are following the food pyramid, they naively believe that refined grain crap is actually good for them. Then, on top of that they have been told portion size is what ultimately matters, and they have no idea quality and type of food is just as important as watching caloric intake.

Experience tells me wherever there is mass ignorance, there is someone or something which exists off of it, like a cancer or a leech. I think the refined junk merchants benefit from this ignorance, and work diligently to keep the wool pulled over our eyes. They want us to believe quality of ingredients does not matter, because there is a much larger room for profit when your product costs nickles to produce, than if it had cost dimes. An educated public is detrimental to their business model. An educated people will still demand competitive prices, however a new element is added to the fray of free market competition: incentive to use quality ingredients. This lowers profit margin. This is not good for big industry.

This is why there is such a strong resistance towards atkins.
Atkins represents a back to basics approach, a return to whole, unprocessed, expensive food which is absolutely fatal to the refined garbage which dominates the food industry. Atkins is also fatal to the booming weight loss industry, which capitalizes on the havoc caused by the former.
There is great financial incentive for the big guys to keep people believing they will die of ketoacidosis and heart disease for eating low carb, and the american people are paying the price.

Industry funds politicians, politicians in turn protect industry, and protecting the refined food merchants means vilifying atkins. Its a sorry conclusion, but one I can't logically deny.

What are your thoughts?

Not to add more fuel to your fire that something is definitely up, but have you read this thread?

The Soft Science of Dietary Fat

While I no longer believe that fat is bad for me I have also learned that carbs aren't either - it's a question of making good choices, unrefined carbs over processed ones. When I think back to how I used to eat I realize that it wasn't much different from how everyone else still does eat. I'm not sure of the facts, but would it be possible for the bulk of the population to eat like we do? Could we sustain that type of diet for years?

Here's a little snip from something I remember reading a few years ago off of LC Luxury, right when I began LCing. It's a little chilling:



-Nat

I definitely feel that the large food companies are doing everything in their power to go against the low-carb way of life because yes...it is due to the almighty dollar. Look at the food commercials on TV....high carb, high fat foods...and every day there are more and more high-carb foods being advertised and pushed on us ... especially pushed on the children. Look at low-carb foods as well...they are extremeley HIGH PRICED too...and don't tell me soy is expensive...!

Anyway, I don't know if this will ever change...unfortunately

Great post, Woo! I totally agree with you.

This trend doesn't benefit the less educated. If they don't go out and find out for themselves what's actually out there, they really miss out on this incredible WOL. I mean I had to do a little research to find out about lowcarbing. If you're uneducated, poor, no internet connection, don't read books, what the heck do you do? Obviously you listen to the health officials, the nutritionists on TV, the gazillion low-fat so called "healthy" food labels in the supermarkets.

The rich and the powerful have a huge stake in keeping us ignorant. When you have money, you can control many forces out there to suit your needs and wants.

Very excellent post nat!

good to see i'm not the only one that thinks its suspicious... like i said the other day in a post- wasn't there a similar phenomenon with refining the coca plant circa 1900 to the one we are seeing today with refining the cane sugar plant (and corn, and etc...)? great posts, woo & nat!

I read somewhere that when the USDA was originally creating the food pyramid, it met [behind closed doors] with the food industry...and the one industry they spent the most time with: The Grain Industry. One can only wonder what happened behind those closed doors, but when the food pyramid was released...Grain became the center of a "healthy" diet. Kinda makes you suspicious, don't it ??? Think about this for a second...recently, the Gov't wanted to recomend we take in no more than a certain amount of added sugars. The Sugar Industry met with them and the Recomendation was changed to "eat a diet moderate in added sugars." The Sugar, Wheat, Corn, and Potato Industries are very powerfull in Washington. It would not suprise me in the least if there was graft involved in the structure of the food pyramid.

I agree. It is similar to the whole issue of milk. The dairy farmers had milk they didn't need and the cow were unhappy. The medical schools needed money. The farmers had money and said - figure out how we can get people to drink this milk and we will give you money. The answer they came up with was calcium. There are a lot of foods that provide calcuim to your body more efficiently than milk, but the cattle farmers had the money.

What gets me so mad is the fact that suposed healthy whole foods have tons of sugar and salt added. I can understand some sodium as a preservative, but sugars?

I went to a Wild Oats (I think that's the name, large organic food store) and they had nitrate and nitrite free meats, all had a ton of sugar added though. i did manage to find unsweetened soy milk, but no soy slender, and again "organic cane juice" or "organic sugar"

What amazes me too is all the names for sugar. The most common
"-ose" ones I know, but I have some products I don't know if a certain ingredient is a sugar or not.

The link to the article on the Soft Science of Dietary Fat, above, is an indepth analysis of just what happend way back when - and it happened just like that, behind closed doors.

I think part of the problem is that there has been 20+ years of thinking low fat is the way to go for health. All the large corporations have tailored to that somewhat out of necessity, and of course have made money at it. The major hindrance for the Atkins WOE in my opinion, is that you can't just reverse 20 years of thinking overnight. Yes, some of these corporations may be heavily involved in politics and drive some of the resistance that way, but I think a lot of it has to do with being scared to do something new, and to admit that someone was wrong for all that time. ANd finally, no one wants to take the blame for feeding the "wrong" information to the public. I think we are going to end up with a situation similar to what finally happened in the tobacco industry before the resistance goes away.