2nd half: Atkins vs. Ornish Diet Debate Transcript

[Guest guest]

Here's the second half....

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MATLAIN: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

In a message to the National Nutrition Summit today, President Clinton noted

we've made a lot of progress in nutrition since the first summit in 1969,

but have we? We're more obsessed with dieting and less successful, a nation

of fatties and couch potatoes, but that's because we're confused. Diet books

line our shelves, each offering starkly treatises for trimming down. Of the

bestsellers, who's right? High-protein advocate Dr. Atkins, or

low-fat proponent Dr. Dean Ornish -- Bill.

PRESS: Dr. Ornish, having tried your diet before and I've read about it, the

rap that I hear is that you take so much fat away that there's no taste

left, and people won't stay on your diet and can't stay on your diet because

they hate what they're eating?

ORNISH: Well, there is an old joke: Am I going to live longer, or is it just

going to seem longer I eat this way? But in fact, we've shown in our studies

that hundreds of people around the country who participated in our direct

clinical trials have been able to stay with this for a number of reason. The

main reason is telling somebody that if they change, they're going to live

to be, you know, 86 instead of 85, doesn't motivate most people, you know,

even when they're 85. There's no point of giving up something that you like

unless you get something back that's better, and not 30 years later, but a

week or two later. And the paradox is that when you make dig changes in

diet, most people find that they feel so much better so quickly that it

reframes the reasons for changing diet from fear of dying to joy of living.

You have more energy, because as you said before, your brain really does get

more blood flow. That's been shown. We have shown in our studies that the

heart gets more blood flow within weeks, and scientifically it has been

shown that sexual organs get more blood flow, too, when you change your

diet.

When I was in medical school, we were talking most impotence is in the head.

It's really in your arteries, and the same mechanisms that affect blood flow

to your heart also affect blood flow -- that's why Viagra works, because it

dilates your arteries.

PRESS: Doctor, you keep asserting that I'm impotent and constipated. I

repeat, I am neither, OK, neither.

ORNISH: No, I'm not. But you know what, there are a lot of people in this

country -- please don't take this as personal disparagement on your manhood.

PRESS: I do.

ORNISH: There are a lot of people -- but look at this, what was the biggest

selling drug of all time last year? Viagra. You may not have this problem, a

lot of people do.

PRESS: I'm not on that either.

ORNISH: I understand. I appreciate that. Stay on the Atkins diet a little

longer, we'll see what happens.

ATKINS: Come on, be a little accurate, will you?

ORNISH: But there are a lot of people in this country who have this problem.

Look, there are a number of published studies that show if your cholesterol

level is above 250, you're 80 percent more likely to have problems with your

sexual function than if it's below 180. That's a lot more motivating for a

lot of us.

PRESS: Dr. Atkins, save us here. Dr. Atkins, I know you wanted to jump in.

ATKINS: Oh my God, this man is an expert on the Ornish diet. That's how much

inexpert he is on somebody else's diet. And it's unbelievable. None of the

stuff that he says happens is what happens.

Let me tell about a study that was done that I didn't fund, and I just

learned about it. It was done at Snyder Children's Hospital. It was done on

adolescents. and it was a 12-week study. There were 30 of them. They put

them on an 1,100-calorie diet, mostly carbohydrates. And in 12 weeks, they 8

1/2 pounds. Then they said go on an 8 percent carbohydrate diet, very

similar to mine, as a matter of fact, identical to mine, and they could have

as many calories as they wanted, and they chose to eat, on the average 1,830

calories, 730 more, and they lost 19 pounds, more than double the amount of

weight. At the same time, the triglycerides dropped 50 percent, and the HDL

went up, whereas the people on the 1,100 calorie Ornish-type diet only lost

of 10 points off their triglycerides and they're HDL...

(CROSSTALK)

ORNISH: Let me respond to that. Let me respond to that.

MATALIN: Go ahead, Dr. Ornish.

ORNISH: First of all, the one area that Dr. Atkins and I actually agree upon

is that when you eat a lot of simple sugars, like sugar, white flour,

alcohol, which your body converts to sugar, they get absorbed quickly, your

blood sugar zooms up, your pancreas makes insulin to bring in back down,

which is good, but insulin has other effects that aren't good. It causes you

to convert calories into fat. It promotes heart disease and other things. We

agree on that. But we don't agree that that's everything, because according

to Dr. Atkins, that's the key to everything. For me, it's one of many

mechanisms, but it is an important one.

ATKINS: There are other mechanisms I know about too, you know.

ORNISH: But the goal is not to go from simple carbohydrates to pork rinds or

bacon. The goal is to go from simply carbohydrates...

ATKINS: Do you think pork rinds are fat, by the way, Ornish? Do you think

they're fat?

ORNISH: Can I just finish the point I'm trying to make? The goal is...

ATKINS: You keep talking about. You know that's one of the leanest proteins

there is, pork rinds? I hope you know that.

ORNISH: The goal is now to go from simply carbohydrates to pork rinds. The

goal is to go from simple carbohydrates to whole foods. , as you

mentioned earlier, fruits and vegetables, grains, beans are rich in fiber...

ATKINS: Well, that's your goal, but that doesn't help the overweight people.

ORNISH: You'd love to be able to complete my sentences.

PRESS: Timeout. Timeout.

MATALIN: Well, let's both take a timeout here, because pork rinds, if

they're high fat or low fat, they're just awful, no matter what. But today,

why we're having this show today, is because the government put out their

new pyramid that we all grew up on.

And, Dr. Atkins, their biggest box is your least prescribed food, and one of

their smaller boxes is the foundation of your diet. Do you think the

government would be -- and this it is from this pyramid of course and these

food groups that the school lunch program is driven. So surely, you are not

saying that the government would be encouraging a nation of bad eating

habits?

ATKINS: Well, they are. They've already done it. They are the perpetrators

of the obesity epidemic, and it was the same food pyramid with 6-9 servings

of white flour that really turned the tide and created obesity in children,

created adult onset diabetes in children as well. And this is the same

thing, and they renewed it again, and they said still the same food pyramid;

they didn't change that. That's the culprit, that's the perpetrator of the

epidemic. And if they can't see that, then they can't see anything. They

don't know how to say two Latin words: " mea culpa. "

PRESS: Dr. Ornish, let me ask you about that. I mean, for the last 20 years,

the feds have been putting out this longer, 30 or 40 years, I guess. They've

been putting out this pyramid. They've been telling people how they should

eat, and over the same period, the number of obese Americans, or Americans

overweight, has gone from 33 percent now to 52 percent. So why should

anybody listen to anything that the feds say about nutrition?

ORNISH: Because again, what has risen over the last 30 years is the

consumption of sugar and white flour. Do you know one-third of the

vegetables that people eat are either french fries or...

PRESS: But whoa, let me stop you there. Isn't...

ATKINS: Why wouldn't white flour go up? That's what they're pushing.

PRESS: Hold on, hold on.

Dr. Ornish, isn't part of the reason that so many people have gone to sugar

is because people like you have said, don't eat the fat. So the food

producers have come out the with all of these low-fat cookies, low-fat

desserts, right, low-fat ice cream?

ORNISH: Bill, I agree with you, and I think probably one of the reasons that

you might have lost weight is that most Americans eat a lot of sugar, and

there was this belief that if it's low in fat, it's good. That's not the

diet that I recommend. It's not just low fat. You can eat Snackwell cookies,

and Wonder Bread, and tea and toast, and drink Dr. Pepper and Coke and say,

well, that's a low-fat diet. It's not a healthy diet.

Again, Dr. Atkins and I do agree that people shouldn't eat so much sugar,

white flour and things that are simple carbohydrates. Where we disagree is

that what I think they should be eating are fruits and vegetable, grains and

beans, whole wheat flour, brown rice. They're rich in fiber. They don't

provoke an instant response. And Americans have been eating tons of sugar.

You know, as I started to say before, a third of the vegetables that

Americans eat are french fries or potato chips. Those act like sugar. That's

not a healthy way to eat. I'm not advocating simply a low-fat diet. It's a

whole foods, natural, high in complex carbohydrates, low in simple sugars

diet.

PRESS: Doctors, with all of this talk about food, I'm getting hungry and

we're out of time. We've got to stop it right there.

Pork versus pasta, not sure we resolved it, but great debate. Doctors,

thanks you, Dr. Ornish in San Francisco, Dr. Atkins in New York.

We'll have you back again after we lose a few more pounds.

and I will be back for closing comments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATALIN: Mr. Ketone Breath, I can not -- you do look great, by the way,

can't speak for your sex drive, but reduced blood flow might explain your

lethargic heart and brain since you've on this diet.

PRESS: You meat pimp you.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESS: I mean, come on. Let me just tell you why this whole food pyramid is

not going to work. One of the things they recommend daily, here it is, a

half of a cup of tofu.

MATALIN: That's your food, whale lover.

PRESS: Wait. Wait. And a two and a half ounce soy burger. Are you kidding? I

wouldn't eat tofu if you paid me.

(LAUGHTER)

MATALIN: Ketone breath.

PRESS: From the left, I'm Bill Press.

Good night for CROSSFIRE.

MATALIN: And from the right, I'm Matalin. Join us again tomorrow night

for more CROSSFIRE.

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