Monday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on cookie diets. I get the attraction. Years ago, I got sucked into the hype. It’s easy, and best yet, you get to eat cookies!
Well, it didn’t work for me. First, I thought they tasted awful. And second, while they were convenient, I guess couldn’t really wrap my brain around half-dozen low protein, low fat, high carb cookies as the bulk of my diet. I know that I didn’t go thru more than two packages.
To be fair, it was so many years ago, that I don’t really remember the details. All I know is that I tossed nearly a full case of expired cookies more than a year or so ago.
But really. Look at the ingredients for Dr. Siegal’s cookies: glycerin, flour, beef protein hydrolysate (?!), rice, oats, soybean oil. The primal girl in me shudders!
But it’s Siegal’s comments in WSJ that really have me annoyed. This first is bad enough. Asked about the challenge of such a low-cal nature of the diet (Siegal’s plan is 1000-1200 calories):
Dr. Siegal says he hears the argument that his regime has too few calories “all the time—and I have to laugh…. I’ve seen a half-million patients over the last 50 years, and I have yet to see a single problem associated with a low-calorie diet. It simply doesn’t exist.”
Well, we know why he doesn’t see a problem, because after his clients starve themselves to their goal, he never sees them again!
Asked about clinical studies about effectiveness or long-term followup, the response:
“What is there to study? You eat a low-calorie diet and you lose weight. Nobody disputes that,” says Dr. Siegal. He estimates that over 50% of the half-million people he’s seen in his practice had reached their goal weight. But he says he has not followed up with them long-term. “If they have lost their weight, they have no reason to come back to us,” he says.
Where to start? With the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who aren’t in his practice but have made him rich by buying cookies online? Or the amount of arrogance it takes to go in the national media and publicly disregard longer term impact?
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
500,000 patients? That’s a huge number, but just barely within the realm of possibility.
I guess he figures ANY publicity is good publicity. Like they say in Hollywood, “Just spell my name right.”
-Steve