Plant-Based Atkins Diet

Harvard study found that men and women eating low carb diets live significantly shorter lives, but what about the “eco-Atkins diet,” a plant-based low carbohydrate diet?

February 2, 2012
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  • paul3917

    So, a diet based on what we’d identify as overly processed, vegan junk food is healthier than a meat-based diet. At least the vegans got some phyto-nutrients from nuts and avocados- but the diet may have been high in sodium also. But is there a more optimal diet than that, or are we to conclude that carbs are bad for us? Do they negatively impact our blood sugar? What would happen if this vegan junk food diet went head-to-head with an all-natural low fat, high carb whole vegan food diet consisting of no processed food and only vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, and a few nuts and seeds, say just one serving a day? What is the real difference between animal and plant protein and fat? Plant protein is probably the same in amino acid composition when a variety of sources are eaten, but it adds phyto-nutrients. Fats on the other hand may have a lower degree of saturation than in animal products, and I think, more vitamin E to preserve them from rancidity. Could this account for the differences observed in this clinical trial?

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    • Toxins

      Low carb vegan is not equivalent to junk food. Eating a salad is a low carbohydrate meal. don’t expect to stay full for long though if you eat this way!

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      • http://twitter.com/MacSmiley MacSmiley

        Satiety depends on the size and ingredients of the salad.

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        • Toxins

          Well, no. If you choose to eat a large salad as your main meal. It may fill you up, but you will get hungry rather quickly afterwards. Salads are very low carb low calorie meals and your body will burn through it quickly, Complex carbohydrates like brown rice, beans, potato, etc on the other hand, are more calorie dense and take a longer time to digest, keeping you satiated longer.

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          • http://twitter.com/MacSmiley MacSmiley

            Actually, the salad I had in mind is serving bowl size and includes 1 cup of beans, not just lettuce and veggies.

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        • Toxins

          Ah! Well the beans no longer make it low carb my good man. nonetheless, I am not advocating a low carb diet. Beans are healthy!

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      • Doug Spoonwood

         Low carb vegan isn’t necessarily equivalent to junk food, because not all “junk” foods are the same.  Potato chips and a veggie “meat” aren’t the same in quite a few respects.  However, low carb vegan, such as the Eco-Atkins diet referenced in the video, almost surely will have a fair amount of sodium in it.  Given that you don’t want too much sodium in your diet, it follows that low carb vegan probably ends up as a less healthy diet in general than a whole foods vegan diet.   This isn’t to say that a low carb vegan diet is as bad as a potato chip diet, or that one needs to avoid high sodium processed foods like veggie “meats” entirely to eat healthy.

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  • http://twitter.com/MacSmiley MacSmiley

    Did the good doc change his YouTube settings again?

    For weeks I’ve has no problem accessing your videos on YouTube with my old Palm. Today we’re back to missing videos on your YT home page. Can’t find the video by searching the title either.

    Can someone please post the direct link please???

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    • Toxins

      Here is the link
      http://youtu.be/bmDUnFd6UX4

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      • http://twitter.com/MacSmiley MacSmiley

        Thanks for the link. It’s showing on the doc’s YT homepage now, too.

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  • http://twitter.com/MacSmiley MacSmiley

    *had

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  • ramonanewman1979

    when you say regular diet that means like the kind where you might have corn flakes and milk for breakfast and meat loaf and mashed potatoes for dinner or a regular vegan/vegetarian diet? also how would a low carb vegan diet compare to a regular vegan diet? aaaand what do you think about maybe making a blog (or special area)dedicated to your recipes? i really like your recipes i have found so far on here and would like to see more :) thanks!

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  • Elfy

    So why are salads considered low carbohydrate? Romaine lettuce, for example, gets 67 percent of its calories from carbs — two-thirds of the calories are from carbs.

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    • Toxins

      Although romaine lettuce is primarily carbohydrates in composition, an entire head has only 21 grams of carbohydrates (RDA 7%). the whole idea behind low carb meals is to restrict overall carbohydrate intake, so greens and vegetables are typically low carb.

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  • Thea

    I too would love to know what line we would see on the graph if we looked at people who ate what this site has defined as a particularly healthy vegan diet, i.e., one primarily based on a wide variety of high antioxidant whole plant foods (not the faux meats and processed foods so much) with B12 and D supplementation. I don’t know if such data is available or not.

    The information in this video as-is is certainly important because it is one more brush stroke in the big picture. But unfortunately, people take information like this and start to say things like, “carbs are bad”. I don’t think we can make that claim just from the information in this video without having the comparison to people who eat whole plant foods, carbs and all.

    Just a thought.

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  • jaxon

    This “observational study ” only indicates that a high protein low carb vegetarian diet appears to lead to lower all- cause mortality rates versus either a high protein low carb Atkins type diet or a regular diet. I assume that a regular diet is a standard American diet (SAD)

    It gives no indication of whether such a diet would be more healthful than a high carb low protein whole food vegetarian diet.That would be of more interest to me and shed a little more light on the proper balance between protein, fat and carbs in the diet.

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  • hcdr

    There are many other studies that provide some lower-level explanations to the correlation. For instance, high animal protein is known to increase cholesterol. High cholesterol is known to increase risk of heart disease. Anti-oxidants and phyto-nutrients are known to have protective effects on human cells, retard or reverse growth of cancer cells, and prolong healthy life. Atkins is condemned by nutritionists everywhere, veg*n or meat eating, for many reasons, not the least being that it’s nutritionally deficient and high-cholesterol. That makes a vegan version of ‘high protein, low carb’ diet a very interesting edge case to consider how it differs, and what the implications are.

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  • Michael Greger M.D.

    I just cleared the former thread here. I’m all in favor of vigorous debate, but even if folks can’t keep things respectful, could we at least please keep things civil? i.e. no ad hominem attacks, profanity, etc. Thanks!

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  • NevadaSmith

    I’d be willing to bet that the meat-based diet was not a healthy meat-based diet that recommended no bad vegetable oils, no trans fats, no nitites or nitrates, no meat with hormones or antibiotics, etc.

    Any healthy food in moderation is good whether animal-based or plant-based. This has been shown by various diets of primitive people throughout the world of years gone by.

    When my wife and I switched from a vegan diet to a low-carb high fat healthy diet which includes animal foods and saturated fat our lipids improved. Especially our triglycerides and HDL. I’ll be happy to post the numbers if you wish. If you continue to eat the polyunsaturated vegetable oils as part of your animal-based Atkins diet then you won’t be eating a healthy animal-based diet.

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    • paul3917

      Personally, I have my doubts that there is such a thing as a healthy Animal-based diet, Nevada. However, short-term gains can be made in a person’s lipid profile simply by eating fewer calories while on an Atkins diet, and eating too many simple carbohydrates on a plant-based diet can play havoc with your lipid profile. The real question isn’t what the short-term gain is in terms of lipids or weight loss,instead, I think we’d agree that it should center on the mortality and morbidity of its adherents. And, from the information given in this segment, it looks like these are negatively impacted by an animal-based diet. Some indigenous peoples do in fact, do well on diets that include meat, however often it includes small portions or omega-3 rich fish as the main meat source, giving them a measure of protection. Even so, their life expectancy isn’t particularly impressive and their rate of infectious diseases is quite high. Other groups of indigenous peoples, for example, ones the paleo advocates like to use as examples such as the Inuit or the Masai, have spectacularly short lives. Their lower lipid numbers seem to be due to omege-3′s in the case of the Inuit (also resulting in a high rate of hemorrhaging), and due to a diet high in vegetable saponins for the Masai who on their native diet, have the shortest life expectancy in the world.

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    • Doug Spoonwood

      “Any healthy food in moderation is good whether animal-based or
      plant-based. This has been shown by various diets of primitive people
      throughout the world of years gone by.”

      No.  Since, so many of those “primitive people” have lived in isolated environments from “civilized” humans for so long, they likely have evolved differently (genetic drift).  Thus what works for them won’t necessarily work for us.

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  • http://www.giftsfilms.com galianoandometepe

    I would like to add my voice to those asking for any results of studies comparing standard vegetarian diets to lower-carb vegetarian diet.

    I have been vegetarian (not vegan – although there were periods of that) since 1990, but have cut out most sources of simple carbohydrates (grains, sugars, potatoes and many fruits) since January & have lost the 30 lbs that have been creeping on as I’ve aged. Mostly, I have done it by increasing my vegetable, legume & nut intake (to replace the pasta or rice or potato), not by increasing fake meats. It seems sustainable to me at this point, and the increased vegetable intake can only be good, right? But with so much contradictory information out there (especially on those sites that espouse a lower-carb diet, but also insist that one must eat a lot of animal protein vs. those veg sites that assume that lower-carb=meat-eating), I would like to know if this is something I should continue with or should I re-introduce grains?

    Could a lower-sugar, lower-starch, whole-food vegetarian diet (sort of paleo-veg) be optimal for health? It seems to make sense to me.

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  • http://www.nutritionfacts.org/ Michael Greger M.D.

    Also, please check out my associated blog post for some context: http://nutritionfacts.org/blog/2012/02/02/atkins-diet-and-erectile-dysfunction/!

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