Diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins was widely reviled in the medical community for his theory that a high-protein, high-fat diet was a healthy way to lose weight. His notion flew in the face of the standard wisdom that such a diet was a pathway to weight gain and clogged arteries. Now the diet is being taken more seriously amid preliminary indications that Atkins may have been right, at least in part.
Few studies have explored the science behind the apparent positive effects of the diet, kinesiology professor Jack Young says. “The diet works in the short term; everybody accepts that. But nobody has looked at the consequences over the long term.”
Young has teamed with Laura Kruskall, chair of the department of nutrition sciences, to see how a high-protein, high-fat regimen impacts the mechanism that controls the buildup of blood sugar from the food we eat. “We’re trying to see if the Atkins diet will, over a long period of time, negatively impact this mechanism,” Young says.
When things work right, the pancreas secretes insulin, which removes the excess sugar in the blood to produce energy or to be stored in the body. When our bodies don’t work right, it takes more insulin to regulate blood sugar. In a worst-case scenario, the high insulin production increases the risk of coronary artery diseases and burns out the pancreas, leading to full-blown diabetes and the need to take insulin injections to stay alive. “We were curious to know if a very high-fat, high-protein diet would lead to that,” Young says.
To test this, Kruskall and Young will feed rats a diet of 65 percent protein, 35 percent fat, and no carbohydrates for six weeks. “Then we will give the animals a dose of sugar, and see how long it takes to be removed from the blood, compared to a group of rats fed a normal diet. If it takes longer than normal, it means they’re on the road to getting type II diabetes.”
