It was too good to be true. A diet that offered weight loss by eating fry-ups and meat-only dinners was always fated to make people feel, if not look, better. And so, say researchers, it has turned out.
They claim that not only is the science behind the Atkins high-protein, low- carbohydrate diet flaky, but the calorie-counting might mean serious long-term health risks. This vindicates generations of mothers whose exhortations to "eat those greens" Dr Richard Atkins wanted to reverse. Yet in a world that is getting fatter, but is yearning to get thinner, the Atkins diet was the perfect reply to the modern-day mantra of no pain, no gain.
It also had enough fans to make the late Dr Atkins a multi-millionaire. And the restrictions imposed were endorsed by some of the thinnest, richest women in Hollywood - who might now be forced to eat their words. But before they or anyone else starts to tuck in to their honestly held opinions, one should consider what made Atkins more of a religion than a dieting regime.
Some followers may have lost pounds, but they were more likely to have gained them. The fact is they believed meal times were shrinking their girth. In this sense, Atkins' "pseudo-science" probably had a profound psychological, rather than physical, effect. Faithful adherents to the diet thought they were upending the orthodoxy of weight loss. Not for them the sweat or the bland foodstuffs that science prescribes for anyone looking for a new figure and a healthier lifestyle.
Not everything in the Atkins diet is bad - cutting out drink will help most people lose weight. Not eating fruit, however, ensures an uncomfortable state of constipation. Capitulating to the forces of unreason is unwelcome. But the real causes of putting on weight - TV dinners, stressful work patterns and sedentary lifestyles - are ignored. The Atkins diet gives people, fearful of putting on pounds, false hope they will not. Hard to stomach, but then so is getting fat.