The High Protein Diet Controversy AndersonCumberland CollegeHealth Issues IISpring Monday, February 12, 2000IntroductionThe traditional dietary guidelines most of us were taught in school are now being challenged as a result of a new diet. Remember when your teacher told you that all you needed to do to eat healthy you just needed to consume a lot of pastas and breads and eat meats and fats sparingly. Times have changed. In today’s fast paced world of dot coms and international space stations, everyone is looking for something new. It’s in with the new and out with the old. It seems this is true with our eating habits as well. I guess we could credit some of this change to the rise of obesity in America. Whatever the reason, it seems that this new high protein diet is here to stay. In fact, according to a new breed of nutritionist, the wait is over. The answer this new protein diet offers for an age-old problem of obesity includes a 180-degree turn around in the currently accepted dietary guidelines. The advocates of the “high protein diet” recommend that a person almost completely eliminate your carbohydrate intake and double your protein intake. This is a far cry from what nutritionists have recommended in the past. In fact, high protein diet plans are insisting that instead of having that plain baked potato and brown rice you planned for dinner, that you serve up a nice, juicy, double helping of barbecue ribs, and ignore the fat. Never mind the fat? What do they mean ignore the fat? Don’t they know about fat? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, not according to advocates of the protein diet. They insist that by eliminating high carbohydrate foods and replacing them with high protein foods, regardless of the amount of fat they contain, your body can more efficiently burn fat and therefore help you to lose weight. Yes, the new protein diet actually insists that you can eat fat a...
