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(More customer reviews)The problem with this slender book is the title ("Killer Diets"). The text of the book is perfectly reasonable, because it examines low carb diets in a fairly neutral way and concludes that actual deaths are extremely RARE...only a handful of examples are known of, and those could have had outside contributing factors.
The real "skinny" on low carb diets is that they don't work long term any better than other, more balanced diets. When they DO appear to work, it's largely because eliminating carbs also eliminates sweets and other tasty things that human beings like to munch on -- many people will lose weight simply from eliminating desserts and sweets, and no other restriction. It is still unclear what the long term effects of eating most meats and saturated fats will be, but it certainly is NOT to kill the person on the diet, as the title here proclaims.
It's sad to see a publisher ruin a perfectly good article (it's really more of a long article than a short book) with such an exploitative title. If you want to try the Atkins or South Beach diets, please go ahead -- they are probably quite safe, have been around a long time and most people go off them simply because they get sick of the limited food choices (and bad breath and constipation).
NIH studies have shown that low carb diets like Atkins produce more short term weight loss than the Ornish diet or the highly touted LEARN diet or Weight Watches -- all "sensible" diets with moderate carb intakes. HOWEVER, in the long term....ALL WEIGHT REDUCING DIETS FAIL. Most people on weight reducing diets have a "rebound effect", where after weeks or months of deprivation, they are starved for whatever they cut out (carbs, sweets, protein, etc.) and since you NEVER LOSE ANY FAT CELLS (they shrink but never go away), your fat cells quickly inflate, and you regain all the lost weight plus a couple extra.
97% of all dieters eventually regain all the weight they lose over about 3 years. So the articles and books you read with all those wonderful testimonials -- they are either fake OR they are people who just lost the weight and simply haven't regained it YET.
That's the real "killer". Obesity is bad for you, no doubt there. But so are a lot of other things, like poverty, bad genetics, being of certain ethnic background, war, famine, political unrest. We can't always "cure" the things that are bad in life, we usually have to do the best we can to cope with them.
I wish there was a simple, easy answer to obesity as all the diet books "proclaim". There isn't.
Nonetheless, there is no reason to scare or alarm people. The title of this book is ridiculous, though Ms. Muha's actual text is a reasonable look at the pros and cons of low carb diets. Read it if you are interested, but ignore the sensationalistic title.
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Low-carb diets may be all the rage, but are they really safe? In this revealing investigation, the other side of the low-carb health craze is explored. While proponents of such diets as the Zone, the South Beach Diet, and the wildly popular Atkins plan claim that their regimens help lower cholesterol and drop pounds, critics of such diets point out that although such results may seem positive in the short term, the long-term effects of low-carb diets may be devastating-even deadly. Some dieters have already died from their eating habits, and for hundreds of thousands of others it may already be too late. Here, the shocking truth about America's newest health fad is revealed.
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