A fat-busting diet craze that knocked Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code off the top of Australia's bestseller list has been branded a "recipe for trouble" by the science journal Nature.

Australia's publicly funded science agency, the CSIRO, has also been roundly criticised for attaching its name to the Total Wellbeing Diet, which has become the fastest-selling Australian title to date. The book, funded by the Australian meat and livestock industry, has already sold 550,000 copies in Australia and more than 100,000 in Britain and New Zealand.

The low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet, conceived by Manny Noakes and Peter Clifton from CSIRO Human Nutrition in Adelaide, claims to offer a "scientifically proven" programme that "challenges old conventions and theories".

But Nature said the success of the book was irritating some scientists. The way the diet was marketed as scientifically proven was "decidedly unsavoury".

The controversy lies in the book's emphasis on eating lean red meat. Patrick Holford, from the Surrey-based Institute for Optimum Nutrition, told Nature he thought the diet was dangerous in the long term and could result in higher levels of breast and prostate cancer, along with stressed kidneys and reduced bone mass.

But Dr Oakes said she had been more surprised by the book's success than the animosity it had generated. "It was always going to be contentious. Nutrition is an emotional issue and there are lots of preconceptions. If the diet was about promoting a bunch of beans and vegetables, no one would have blinked."

The book has already made more than A$1m (£420,000) in royalties for the CSIRO.