Atkins adherents eat more vegetables?

Robert Atkins did not base his diet on science. He read a bit, lost some weight, recommended it to his patients, and built an empire on books and supplements. But, twenty five years later, the science started to get done when a medical professor at Duke wrote Atkins asking him for data to back up his claims. Atkins began funding Westman and Yancy to do some studies. The results in these 4- to 6-month studies were encouraging. Participants lost weight. Triglycerides went down. HDL went up. Diabetics' blood sugar improved. When interviewed in 2004, one of the researchers had something interesting to say:

"We had people in our studies tell us that they are eating more vegetables on the Atkins diet," says Yancy. "It's because people have concentrated so much on starches and carbohydrates. When those are taken out of the picture, they have only meat, eggs, and vegetables as an option, and so they end up eating more vegetables."[1]

Eating more of the green, leafy, low-calorie vegetables seems to be one thing all the diets agree on.

1. _The skinny on the Low-Carb Craze Kim McDonald, Duke Magazine 2004 September;90(5)