9 Responses to “The Atkins Diet Goes Vegan”

1. Rick Says:
   June 11th, 2009 at 5:03 am

   (corrected)
   The link to the Messina blog didn’t work for me although the other link to the study opened up fine. It seems to me, rather than comparing a low carb vegan diet to a high carb LOV diet, that it might be more useful to compare a low carb vegan diet to a high carb vegan diet, or alternately, a low carb LOV diet to a high carb LOV diet. It is unclear to me why they designed the study as they did; would it not be better to only change one variable at a time?

2. Elaine Vigneault Says:
   June 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

   They compared two high-fat diets: one 43% fat, the other 25% fat. That’s a lot of fat!

3. Jack Norris RD Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am

   Most vegans eat more than 25% fat (and even before all the vegan junk food came on the market they were eating about 27-29% fat). 43% fat is very high, but 25% is a relatively low-fat diet.

4. beforewisdom Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 9:38 am

   Animal fat and animal protein aside Atkins has been criticized as being unhealthy since ketosis is a strain on the body. It seems unsettling that locarb diets might be endorsed once a way to do it as a vegetarian might be found.

5. Jack Norris RD Says:
   June 12th, 2009 at 10:41 am

   I haven’t read the study yet but I’d be pretty surprised if anyone got into ketosis on a 43% fat diet. I think the idea was to test whether fat and protein are more satisfying than carbohydrates.

6. xzebrasx Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 1:45 am

   “I haven’t read the study yet but I’d be pretty surprised if anyone got into ketosis on a 43% fat diet.”

   Why is that? As far as I know, the only thing required for getting into ketosis is lowering carbohydrate intake to less than 100g/day. Dietary protein and fat intake has virtually no impact. At least that’s what I’d gathered from reading Lyle McDonald’s “The Ketogenic Diet”.

7. Jack Norris RD Says:
   August 4th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Because a typical ketogenic diet is about 90% fat. I’m not sure about the 100 g/day stat, but if you take a diet of 1500 calories and base it on 43% fat and 15% protein, then the carbohydrate would be about 200 g.

8. Karen Eichelberger Says:
   August 27th, 2009 at 7:17 am

   Hi Jack,

   I read this post with great interest because a friend of mine has a son with epilepsy. They discovered years ago that a ketogenic diet, much like the Atkins diet, all but eliminated his seizures. Although he is now 22 years old, when my friend discovered the ketogenic diet, her son was only 4 and was having more than 200 seizures per day. You can imagine their relief upon discovering a remedy that no medicine or surgery could produce.

   Do you know whether this vegan-based ketogenic diet is also effective in eliminating seizures among people with epilepsy? I would like to pass on this tip to my friends.

   Best regards,
   Karen

9. Jack Norris RD Says:
   August 27th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

   Hi Karen,

   This diet is not ketogenic; it’s much too low in fat. I don’t know of anyone with epilepsy on a vegan ketogenic diet. It seems possible if you use a lot of tofu, tempeh, and/or fake meats.

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