Atkin's not only bad for you, but it's bad for the enviorment as well.

[frannyan]

Eco-Consequences of Low-Carb Diets

by Jemilah Magnusson

Despite the Christmas 2003 discovery in Washington State of the first
U.S. case of mad cow disease, meat-heavy Atkins-like diets soared in
popularity last year. An estimated 26 million Americans may have been on
low-carbohydrate diets, and 3,737 low-carb products and varieties hit
supermarket shelves in 2004. By November of 2004, however, the craze
appeared to be slowing: The number of those surveyed on a low-carb diet
was half what it had been earlier in the year. Atkins Nutritionals saw
sales drop 32 percent and announced layoffs of 40 percent of its
employees.

Dieters may have finally heeded warnings from the Physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine, the American Heart Association, the American
Dietetic Association and the American Kidney Fund about the adverse
health effects of low-carb diets, which are heavy in saturated animal
fats that increase the risk of obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease
and diabetes. That such diets appear to be on the way out is good news
not only for the health of dieters but also for the environment.

"We can't have the entire population of the United States eating meat
like that," says certified holistic health counselor Alex Jamieson. The
reason, argue ecologist Marty Bender and plant breeder Stan Cox of the
Land Institute in an article on low-carb diets, is that increased demand
for meat would lead to increased production. "Already, industry analysts
give much of the credit for this fall's [2003] sharply higher beef and
egg prices to high-protein, low-carb dieters," write Bender and Cox.
"Stepped-up production is sure to follow." They claim that if all the
earth's overweight inhabitants went on an Atkins-style diet, animal
protein requirements would increase from a worldwide average of 56 grams
to about 100 grams per day, requiring the meat, dairy, poultry and
seafood industries to increase output by 25 percent. This would mean "at
least a 7 percent increase in cropland worldwide at a time when farmers
are already using most of their better land." Cox and Bender argue that
this would lead to erosion and increased pollution from pesticide use,
not to mention overgrazing and degradation of farmland.

The environmental threat of overeating animal protein is still cause for
concern, they argue, even with declining popularity. "The kind of
ecological damage we have described will occur in direct proportion to
the number of people who do adopt the diet."