THE high-protein Atkins diet works not for the reasons its inventor claimed, but simply because people eat less.
Several studies have shown that a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet does result in weight loss, though there are worries about the long-term health effects. Robert Atkins, who invented the diet in the 1970s, claimed it works because digesting protein burns more energy than digesting carbohydrates and because calories are lost in urine through a process called ketosis.
A series of unpublished studies highlighted last year in the BBC TV programme Horizon suggest that neither of these reasons is correct, and that instead…
