Atkins diet centers on the green
When diet docs die, they certainly don't go quietly.
First there was Dr. Herman Tarnower, creator of the oh-so-passe Scarsdale Diet, who was gunned down in his study by his irate lover. Now the late Dr. Robert Atkins of lotsa-fat, low-carb fame has risen again, as it were, into the public eye.
The ghoulish Atkins postmortem imbroglio reads like scenes from a Carl Hiaasen novel. First, a physicians group devoted to promoting vegetarianism (Is Prince Charles somehow involved? One can only hope) got hold of the confidential medical examiner's report on Atkins's death. Next, they leaked it to The Wall Street Journal, hyping the "heart attack angle." The document, now available for all to read at thesmokinggun.com, mentions that Atkins, who observed his own diet, had a history of myocardial infarction, or heart attack.
This suggestion is hugely controversial, because Atkinoids have always argued, counterintuitively, that their high-fat diet does not increase the risk of heart attacks.
The Empire struck back. On the official Atkins website, atkins.com, Dr. Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council, blasted the "animal rights activists" for leaking the medical examiner's report, and for publicizing Atkins's extreme obesity -- he was 6 feet tall and weighed 258 pounds -- at the time of his death. Atkins's weight ballooned as the result of fluid retention after he was hospitalized for a fall that proved to be fatal. In an interview with the Journal, Trager stressed that Atkins's heart problems resulted from a disease of the heart muscle, not from his eating habits.
Atkins's widow, Veronica, has posted a lengthy statement on the Atkins website, imploring that her husband's soul be allowed to "rest in peace" so that "I can grieve uninterrupted." "Is caring about what someone else eats so important that some doctors are willing to betray their most basic of oaths, to protect a patient's dignity and confidentiality?" she asked.
A vulgar, agenda-driven invasion of privacy? To be sure. An unnecessary and ultimately irrelevant spectacle exploiting unknowable facts about a man 10 months in the grave? Yes. But let's not forget: This is not a battle over ideas or public health. This is a dispute about money. Lots of money.
Dr. Atkins and his successors who manage the booming $200 million Atkins Nutritionals business were not working for the betterment of mankind, to borrow Mary Baker Eddy's phrase. They were working to sell diet books, millions and millions of them, and specialized food products with the Atkins label. "Atkins" is a registered trademark, and people pay to use it. Most recently, the sandwich chain Subway and the fern bar/pickup joint T.G.I. Friday's have signed partnerships to sell food with the Atkins "seal of approval." The Atkins brand has power, and it uses that power to boost profit margins.
Business Week has noted that Atkins charges $4.99 for a box of soybean-based pasta, twice the price of wheat-based noodles, even though the ingredients cost roughly the same. A Boston private equity company, Parthenon Capital, now owns a majority of Atkins Nutritionals shares and has talked about taking the rapidly growing firm public. "It is something we are considering," says co-chief executive John Rutherford.
Remember: It's all about the green. And I don't mean broccoli.
The game
A friend of mine, hoping to excite my perceived anti-Harvard sympathies, notes that Yale has had a university alumnus on the presidential ticket in each of the past nine elections, and that this year it may have two: George Bush and John Kerry. "I can't imagine any other university has had such a long and uninterrupted run," he writes, "nor that Harvard has ever done better that Franklin Roosevelt's four straight."
But to me, it proves something different. Yale graduates naively pursue ideals of public service, while the more sophisticated Harvard types work the inside track, and work it better. Nobody ever elected Henry Kissinger, World's Greatest University, class of 1950, or Robert Rubin (WGU, '60) to anything, but at various times they ended up running the country anyway. Bill Gates dropped out and he ended up running the world.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
