Real Food for Real PeopleA groundless beef with the Atkins diet.

(Continued from page 1)

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But that assumption is exactly what the study rejects. People don't live in highly controlled conditions. They live in the real world. They forget things. They miscalculate. They're tempted. They rationalize. You can't test a diet by screening out these failings. You have to incorporate them. What gives the study "external validity," the authors explain, is that it assesses food consumption "under realistic conditions."

In the real world, simplicity helps. Atkins has few rules and "one of the simplest messages … absolutely no sugar and no refined carbs,'' Gardner observes. That, he suspects, might explain why participants followed the Atkins regimen more closely than the other diets.

In the real world, sometimes you have to push people too far to get them to go halfway. "Cutting back drastically on simple carbohydrates," as Atkins demands, "is clearly a step in the right direction," says Gardner. Contrary to Sears' complaint, the prescribed diets did affect what participants ate. The Atkins group cut its carb intake by more than half. No other group came close to that. If it's true, as Sears protests, that the only participants who lowered their carbs to Zone levels were those assigned to the more extreme Atkins diet, then which of the two diets would you recommend to a friend? I'd go with Atkins.

In the real world, wise policies admit and work with human weakness. Capitalism uses greed to spread wealth. Political checks and balances use ambition to check ambition. Atkins uses meat and fat cravings to kill appetite. As Gardner explains, "Protein is more satiating than carbohydrates or fats, which may have helped those in the Atkins group to eat less without feeling hungry." Complaining that people follow Atkins only because it's tasty is like complaining that businessmen create jobs only to get rich. A job is a job.

I know it seems crazy that sausage and cream cheese could be good for you. In the long run, I'm certain they can't be. But the beauty of science is its disrespect for certainties. You play the game and see who wins. In the short run, so far, Atkins wins.

The ideal diet, I'm sure, is Gardner's. He's a vegetarian. I'd be one, too, if I had the strength. And the ideal birth-control method would be abstinence, if we could all be chaste. But until people are more like angels, you'd better deal with us as we are, or be prepared to share in the failure.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Follow him on Twitter here.

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

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