Atkins diet
The Atkins diet, officially called the Atkins Nutritional Approach, is a low-carbohydrate diet created by Dr Robert Atkins from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and used to resolve his own overweight condition. He later popularized the Atkins diet in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972. In his revised book, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, he modified or changed some of but remained faithful to the original concepts.
Atkins franchise, a business formed to provide products to those individuals on the diet, was highly successful due to the popularity of the diet, and is considered the driving entity of the larger "low-carb craze" during the early millennium. However its success dwindled and Atkins Nutritionals of Ronkonkoma, New York, the company founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2005, two years after his death. The company re-emerged in January 2006, and the Atkins logo is still highly visible through licensed-proprietary branding for food products and related merchandise.
The Atkins Diet is a departure from the previously prevailing metabolic theories. Atkins said that there are important unrecognized factors in Western eating habits leading to obesity. Primarily, he believed that the main cause of obesity is eating refined carbohydrates, particularly sugar, flour, and high-fructose corn syrups.
The Atkins Diet involves restriction of carbohydrates to more frequently switch the body's metabolism from burning glucose as fuel to burning stored body fat. This process (called ketosis) begins when insulin levels are low; in normal humans, insulin is lowest when blood glucose levels are low (mostly before eating). Caloric carbohydates (e.g., glucose or starch (itself made of chains of glucose)) produce most of the blood sugar after meals and can be calculated to even determine the insulin needs of diabetics. Because of its low digestibility, fiber provides little or no food energy and does not significantly impact glucose and insulin levels. Ketosis involves lipolysis in which some of the lipid stores in fat cells are transferred to the blood.
