The downfall of the Atkins Diet is also its one saving grace–people may not be able to tolerate the diet for long enough to suffer the long-term consequences. The American Heart Association states: “Individuals who follow these diets are therefore at risk for compromised vitamin and mineral intake, as well as potential cardiac, renal [kidney], bone, and liver abnormalities overall.”[254] Low carb diets like the Atkins diet may also hasten the onset of type II diabetes.[519] In short, concluded the September 2004 review in The Lancet,[524] “low-carbohydrate diets cannot be recommended.”[525]
In Europe, hospitals have already started banning the Atkins Diet[255-256] after the British government’s Medical Research Council, backed up by the British Nutrition Foundation and the British Dietetic Association,[257] condemned the Atkins Diet as “negligent”[258] “nonsense and pseudo-science”[259] posing a “massive health risk.”[260]
An article out of the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine entitled “Physician’s Guide to Popular Low Carbohydrate Weight-Loss Diets” noted that the Atkins Diet “can jeopardize health in a variety of ways.”[261] Let us count the ways.