New diet, same old snake oil - critique of the diet book 'The Zone' - Column

Vegetarian Times, March, 1997 by Robert Jacobs

Any Sears deserves a Ph.D. in marketing. The author of the best-selling diet book, The Zone (Regan Books, 1995), and subject of a recent article in this magazine ("The Vegetarian Zone, "January, p. 52), says, in effect, that people can eat their favorite foods while losing weight and wraps it in a bunch of questionable science.

Some dieters, like Vegetarian Times' food editor Karen Straus, who have found success on the Zone diet, attribute their former weight problems to a High carbohydrate diet. They say, "I did everything right: I cut back on fat, cut back on sugar and still I gained weight. The problem must have been all those carbs." However, the real reason many vegetarians and non-vegetarians don't succeed on a high-carb diet has to do with the type of carbs they choose and what they put on top of the carbs.

Most people who think they are eating a "high carbohydrate diet" are doing nothing of the sort. A closer looks reveals that they're loading up on rich sauces and dairy products poured on top of refined flour noodles. And to wash it down, they're drinking glasses of juice, which may not have sugar added to them but are still loaded with naturally occurring sugar. It is these refined flours and sugars (both natural and refined) that cause swings in blood sugars and thus insulin levels, leading to weight gain and other health disorders. So while these people may be right to despair of their current diets, they're wrong to blame carbohydrates.

There is little doubt that a diet comprised of 10 percent fat, 80 percent carbs and 10 percent protein is optimal for both good health and weight management. The scientific evidence is substantial and World Health Organization surveys of people all over the world also support the 10-80-10 ratio of macronutrients. I have personally seen this ratio work for the 70 percent of the noninsulin-dependent diabetics and 39 percent of the insulin-dependent diabetics who leave the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, Calif., after three weeks, free of medication and with normal blood sugar levels.

The problem is that die average consumer does not understand what carbohydrates are and how to choose among them. Broccoli, oats and white sugar are all technically carbohydrates but obviously have very different effects on one's weight and blood sugar. For example, whole oats are a near-perfect food. Eaten as oatmeal, those oats will give you energy without a blood sugar spike. However, if you take those oats and grind them into flour, the resulting product has an effect on your body very much like table sugar. For optimal health and weight maintenance, you want to look down at your plate and see plants in their whole and complete form with no added oils or creams. It may sound simplistic, but that's how nature created food.

Despite the fact that Sears makes no mention of the importance of moderate, daily aerobic exercise -- one of the most powerful tools for controlling blood sugar levels -- I do not doubt that people lose weight on his diet. It is a low-calorie diet -- the kind where most people lose weight but rebound when they inevitably end the diet. if, of course, you have unusually strong willpower and you manage to stick with this diet plan long enough, you may have heart attacks, stroke or colon cancer to look forward to as your reward. These deadly three are directly linked to a high-fat, high-protein diet.

To Sears' credit, he distinguished good carbs from bad carbs by glycemic index (how quickly foods convert to glucose in the bloodstream). This is the one and only redeeming aspect to The Zone. The rest of the book is yet another exploitation of America's insatiable appetite for a quick and easy fix.