Bankruptcy marks rapid fall of low-carb craze

Martin Wolk • Profile • E-mail

It was only two years ago that the food industry seemed to be in full retreat under the onslaught of the low-carbohydrate diet craze led by best-selling author Dr. Robert Atkins.

Burger King tossed the bun and offered high-protein alternatives like steak and grilled shrimp. Food giants Unilever and Kraft scrambled to offer low-carb options in everything from frozen dinners to snack foods. There were low-carb colas, low-carb wines and low-carb malt beverages. Even KFC tried to market its fried chicken as a healthy, low-carb food, a move that earned it a reprimand from the Federal Trade Commission.

Now it is the Atkins diet that is withering under fire, as seen this week in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Atkins Nutritionals, the company founded by the late cardiologist and most closely identified with the low-carb lifestyle.

“It was a fad, but it was a different fad than usual because it was so big and lasted so long,” said James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado. He said the Atkins plan appealed to overweight Americans looking for a quick fix, but like most diet-book diets it included no prescription for the physical activity needed to maintain a healthy weight.

The Atkins diet may have promised more than it ultimately could deliver, but the early results in the form of lost pounds were impressive enough to get millions of Americans to try the meat-and-no-potatoes regimen. Atkins’ books were best-sellers as far back as the 1970s, but it was not until around 2000 that the fad took off, fueled by a surge of media attention to the problem of obesity and grass-roots enthusiasm for the diet.

The idea that you could eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, steak for dinner and still lose weight was an appealing one for dieters. In a world of conflicting messages about diet, the Atkins plan was clear and simple: Protein was good, carbs were bad.

And it worked — at least for a while.

“People actually saw the effect of what they were doing,” said said Ken Harris, a food industry consultant with Cannondale Associates in Evanston, Ill. “There was a buzz created that was bigger than Atkins.”

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