It may have worked wonders for Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Zeta-Jones and half the people in your office, but Dr Robert Atkins' high-protein, low carbohydrate diet seems to be falling from favour.

Although the paperback version of Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution is leaping from the shelves at the rate of 30,000 copies a week in Britain - three times faster than any other book except the new Harry Potter - the backlash is well under way. Why? Because, reported the Daily Telegraph, "Scientists and medics say the Atkins regime could be creating a ticking time bomb of widespread heart disease, kidney failure, bowel cancer, osteoporosis, strokes, muscle wastage and high cholesterol."

Naturopath Michael van Straten told the Daily Express the diet was "a dreadful thing" and that he would like to "personally confiscate every copy and have a ceremonial public burning".

Lorraine Kelly was a little more circumspect. "When you admire the figures of ... Jennifer Aniston and Renée Zellweger ... bear in mind that they probably have nausea, headaches and bad breath," she wrote in the Sun. "[It] certainly isn't a way of eating for life."

The nation's spud farmers would have agreed with Kelly's Sun colleague, Dominic Mohan, who condemned the "Pratkins diet". As the Daily Mail reported, growers have launched a £1m campaign to convince us that the humble potato is not the food of the devil.

Janet Street-Porter, however, had a rather different reason for ruing Dr Atkins' legacy. Cooking for guests had become a nightmare - no one will eat bread or potatoes any more. The world would remember 2003 as "the year sensible eating vanished," she said in the Independent on Sunday. "No doubt Marks & Spencer will soon be launching an Atkins-approved range of meals for one."

But some would not be swayed. "The doom-merchants have got a job on their hands," warned Clare Raymond in the Daily Mirror. "Because, for all their threats of the long-term side effects, we slimmers are only interested in one thing. It works."