“While we’re impressed with the weight loss of this diet, we still are not sure about the safety of it,” Westman said. “More studies need to be done in order to be confident about the long-term safety of this type of diet.”

This is a direct quote from the study which was referenced.

I would not base the safety of the Atkins diet on this study (It's efficacy in weight loss has never been debated) but this was a flawed study for the following reasons:


Number one, it was funded completely by the Atkins center for complementary medicine so there may be some bias for reporting only on the data that supports the program and ignoring the ones that don't. (research bias)

Number two, subjects studied was 51. Over half did not exercise so to extrapolate this study to cyclists or other athletes would be bad. Not to mention 10 dropped out of the study but it gave no reason (ie: did they have kidney stones,etc.) 51 people is not a large enough clinical trial to make firm decisons about the safety of this program.

Number three, they did not take the same population cohort and give them another diet to follow and compare this to the Atkins regimine. Many people's behavior change when they are participating in any clincial trial ie: so was the weight loss due to the atkin's diet only or did particpating in the clinical trial affect results? (This is called particpant bias) This has been a common error in clinical research.


Number 4, they checked cholesterol after six months on the diet, but previous case reports show initial lowering of cholesterol with eventual rise after 6 mos

Number 5, no urinanalysis for proteinuria (protein in urine) was monitored which is one of the concerns with this diet (the development of abnormal proteins in the urine suggesting kidney damage.)

I think Dr. Westman was up front about the limitations of this study. We will see what future ones show.