Dean Ornish's Diet Under Fire

[Guest guest]

Hi Group - as you know, Dr. R. suggests we follow the Ornish Diet plan after

MGB. Well, someone sent me the following transcript of the show " Crossfire "

which hosted Dean Ornish and Atkins fighting it out over which of their

diet plans is the healthiest....warning - it's very long! (But interesting, and

worth the read!)

Just FYI....

M.

MGB 6/7/00

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Crossfire

What's the Healthiest Way to Lose Weight?

Aired May 30, 2000 - 7:30 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE

UPDATED.

BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Tonight, a real food fight! As the government releases

new dietary guideline, two bestselling diet authors duke it out over the

best way to lose weight. Which one has the better plan?

ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press; on the

right, Matalin. In the crossfire, in New York, Dr. Atkins,

founder and medical director of the Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine

and author of " Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, " and in San Francisco. Dr.

Dean Ornish, founder and director of the Preventive Medicine Research

Institute and author of " Eat More, Weigh Less. "

PRESS: Good evening. Welcome to CROSSFIRE. And tonight, a real food fight

over real food on day one of the National Summit on Health and Nutrition

here in Washington.

Yes, so many Americans are overweight, the federal government's decided to

tell us how much we should exercise -- 30 minutes a day, five days a week --

and how much we should eat: two to three servings of meat, chicken or fish,

and six to 11 helpings of carbohydrates everyday.

But as Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman learned today, for some people all

this talk about eating meat is enough to stir up strong feelings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN GLICKMAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURAL: Thank you, Donna, very...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame on you Dan Glickman, you meat pimp! Shame on you!

Shame on you for promoting...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: Meat pimp? Well, strong feelings, too, about how best to lose weight

where tonight's guests are polar opposites.

Dr. Dean Ornish prescribes an ultra-low-fat diet: beans, fruits, vegetables,

and whole grains mostly. Dr. Atkins urges a high-

protein,low-carbohydrate diet. You know, eat the hamburger and throwaway the

bun. They both can't be right, or can they? Well, tonight, we suck in our

stomachs, think thin, and try to figure it all out.

Bon appetite -- .

MARY MATALIN, CO-HOST: Well, Dr. Atkins, welcome back once again, and I'm

sure that woman wouldn't refer to you as a meat pimp, although that clearly

is the main essence of the foundation of your diet.

Dean Ornish, with whom you've debated before, has had much to say about this

diet. We're going to go through those issues as you and I have before. But

he's added one that I've never heard, and I think it's a particularly --

well, you may think it's a particularly low blow. He says that high-protein

diets preclude sufficient blood flow to our most important organs.

Therefore, insufficient blood flow to our brains makes us lethargic, to our

heart makes us tired, and to our sexual organs makes us impotent.

I think he's suggesting that high protein means low libido. Can you address

that?

DR. ROBERT ATKINS, ATKINS CENTER FOR COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE: Well, I

shouldn't have to. It doesn't happen. He may feel that he has something

there, but he doesn't. There's no bottom-line evidence.

I have treated 50,000 patients with a high-protein diet, and all they tell

me is that their sex life is better than it ever was.

So it just doesn't make any sense. If he wants to invent things, let him

invent things. But he's really looking at some basic science, which doesn't

carry out to the real world, because it isn't what happens.

What really happens is that we correct, when we put an overweight person on

a low-carbohydrate diet, we correct what's wrong with them, because what's

wrong with them is they put out too much insulin. They put out too much

insulin -- as long as they're a little overweight, we see that over and over

again. By the time they're considerably overweight, the insulin levels are

off-the-chart they're so much higher than ever.

And insulin is really a killer. It was just shown in a recent study out of

Toronto that it increased the death rate from breast cancer. This has

nothing to do with obesity. Yet, the people with the highest insulin levels

had 30 percents deaths when they were followed and only 5 percent were dying

from the other kind, from the people who had low insulin levels.

And insulin is really a killer. It was just shown in a recent study out of

Toronto that it increased the death rate from breast cancer. This has

nothing to do with obesity. Yet, the people with the highest insulin levels

had 30 percents deaths when they were followed and only 5 percent were dying

from the other kind, from the people who had low insulin levels.

MATALIN: OK. Let -- let -- the insulin -- reducing the insulin provocation

is the essence of why the high protein works. But what Dr. Ornish says...

ATKINS: Absolutely.

MATALIN: And I'm paraphrasing. He says you throw out the

baby with the bath-water, because while throwing out simple carbohydrates --

wine, alcohol, which is on my seven food groups, every single one of them --

you throw out the complex carbohydrates, which are usually high in fiber,

therefore their absorption is slow. And they can give you high energy and

they're antioxidants and they produce all sorts of good health benefits. And

we need to have them, and you eliminate them as well.

ATKINS: Well, let's look at what we really do. What we really do is correct

what's wrong with an overweight person.

Think of this: An overweight person is someone who wants to burn that fat.

Well, that fat is there for a purpose. The purpose of the fat is a back-up

fuel system. So if you don't eat carbohydrates, your fat becomes your

primary fuel and you start burning it. When that happens, everything is

different, because when fat is being mobilized and used as fuel it's not

being deposited.

And all the research that has showed that saturated fats are bad or that

other fats are bad don't apply when fat is being used as the primary fuel.

And that's the part of the research that Dean Ornish doesn't pay attention

to and that the government and their food pyramid doesn't pay attention to.

PRESS: Dr. Ornish, on that point, let me ask you to step up to the plate, so

to speak. And far be it for me to take sides in this debate, but a couple of

months ago I went on the Atkins diet. I lost about 20 pounds. I miss pasta,

I miss potatoes, but overall I've really enjoyed it, and I might add I have

had -- suffered no loss of sex drive.

What's your beef with the Atkins diet?

DR. DEAN ORNISH, PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Well, I'd love to

tell people that eating pork rinds and bacon and sausage is a healthy way to

lose weight, but it isn't. I'm glad you've been able to lose weight. There

are lots of ways losing weight. You could go on chemotherapy and lose

weight, but I don't recommend it as the optimal way.

When you go on a healthy diet, a diet like I recommend, that's predominantly

fruits and vegetables and grains and beans in their natural forms, you can

lose even more weight. You can actually keep it off, which no one has ever

shown on an Atkins kind of diet. And instead of mortgaging your health in

the process by doing what you've been doing, you're actually enhancing your

health.

Meat is high in disease-causing substances like saturated fat,

cholesterol,oxidants, and it's low in the ones that are protective, whereas

you eat fruits and vegetables and grains and beans you're not only avoiding

the substances that promote disease, like the ones we just mentioned, you're

getting thousands of others that have anti- cancer, anti-aging and

anti-heart disease properties.

PRESS: Well, but Dr. Ornish, a couple of problems here quickly. One of them

is, I mean, you're talking about fruits and vegetables and beans and whole

grains. I mean, you're trying to turn us all into a nation of vegetarians.

It's not going to work!

ORNISH: Well, first of all, you don't have to be a vegetarian. If you're

trying to reverse heart disease, that's what it takes. I'd love to be able

to tell people that eating cheese burgers can reverse heart disease but it

doesn't.

I'm a scientist. I'm a professor at the medical school at the University of

California. I'm the president of a nonprofit research institute, and for the

last 23 years my colleagues and I have published data in the leading

peer-reviewed journals showing you can actually reverse heart disease in

most cases by making these kinds of changes in diet and lifestyle that I

recommend.

Now, I recognize that the public is confused, because Dr. Ornish says one

thing, Dr. Atkins says another.

PRESS: Yes, right!

ORNISH: But you know, the whole point of science is to help people separate

and sort through these conflicting claims. The difference between Dr. Atkins

and me is that we've published in all the leading peer-reviewed medical

journals. Dr. Atkins has never published a single study in any journal ever.

And that's the whole point of science is to say what is the evidence and to

prove it, not just to say, oh, I've seen a lot of patients, but to prove it

to the satisfaction of other people.

PRESS: Dr. Atkins?

ATKINS: Yes?

PRESS: You respond. I mean, you're not published; therefore, you're not for

real.

ATKINS: Well, I am a practicing physician and I have treated 65,000 patients

with a variety of problems, and it's certainly not just overweight. We've

taken diabetics and reversed their diabetes. We've gotten hypertensive

people off their medications.

I don't publish research. I treat patients. However, people have published

research and they've been publishing for 50 years. The evidence that has

been published is already overwhelming. It's overwhelming that the diet

provides a metabolic advantage, that you can lose more fat calorie per

calorie than on balanced diets or low-fat diets or an Ornish diet even. And

there's no question about that.

MATALIN: Well, Dr. Atkins...

ATKINS: There's no question that it takes the appetite away, that...

PRESS: Go ahead, Dr. Ornish. It's OK.

ATKINS: ... one can eat unlimited quantities and still lose weight.

ORNISH: Well, if you'll let me, I will.

PRESS: Go ahead, Dr. Ornish.

ORNISH: The one study that doctor -- first of all, I think one of the points

that Dr. Ayoob from the American Dietetic Association -- which, by the way,

called Dr. Atkins' diet a nightmare of a diet -- when he and I debated Dr.

Atkins earlier this year that the Department of Agriculture organized, one

of the points that Dr. Atkins -- well, one of the points that Dr. Ayoob made

is first you do research showing that something works, then you write books

about it, not the other way around: because Dr. Atkins mentioned that he had

commissioned Dr. Westman to finally begin doing some studies. And

Dr.Westman published -- or presented data.

And what did he say? The adverse effects of the Atkins diet: 70 percent

become constipated; 65 percent develop bad breath; and so on.

Now, the reason for that is when you're eating a lot of meat and other...

ATKINS: Is that considered a bad side effect after you've lost 40 pounds,

that you don't like...

ORNISH: I'd say bad...

ATKINS: Come on.

ORNISH: You know, if you go on an Atkins diet you might...

ATKINS: What about your sensible values?

ORNISH: You might be able to lose weight and attract people to you, but when

they get to close, and they smell your breath and your body odor, they're

going to be repelled, because that's how your body...

ATKINS: Oh, that's ridiculous! That doesn't happen in real life.

ORNISH: This is your own data.

ATKINS: That's doesn't happen.

ORNISH: Dr. Atkins, Dr. Atkins, excuse me a second.

ATKINS: As a matter of fact, people are doing research all the time...

ORNISH: These are your own data from studies that you funded, that 70

percent of the people become constipated or have bad breath. Now, the reason

they have bad breath is because that's how your body excretes toxic

substances, through your breath...

ATKINS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) ORNISH: ... (UNINTELLIGIBLE) perspiration. Through

your breath, through your perspiration and through your bowels.

PRESS: All right. One at a time.

ORNISH: And in fact...

ATKINS: You're wrong.

ORNISH: ... the number of...

ATKINS: What you just claimed is scientifically incorrect, again.

ORNISH: This is a study you commissioned, Dr. Atkins. I'm only quoting the

study that you funded.

ATKINS: But the ketone breath is not necessarily bad breath; it's ketones,

meaning you're burning up your fat. I like to have that breath, because I

like to know I'm losing the weight, and so do my millions of followers and

millions of patients. They love knowing they're burning their ketones.

Happiness is a purple stick, and happiness is ketone breath.

MATALIN: That's right, Doctors, one man's bad breath is another's trimmed

tummy, and now the government has a dog in this food fight. Should they?

We'll discuss that when we come back CROSSFIRE. But in the meantime, you can

calculate your body fat index at CNN.com/CROSSFIRE.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)