How can millions of people believe that an effective diet would purposefully keep us from eating foods rich in the vitamins and nutrients we need yet brand their own supplements to replace those very nutrients? Something is wrong with this picture. Yet this is what Dr. Atkins promoted when he promoted not only the Atkins Diet but the vitamin supplement for the Atkins Diet.
The Atkins Diet doesn’t reach daily values for some of the vitamins and minerals that we need every day but provides 400% of some of the daily values. For example, in an analysis of sample Atkins Diets during the induction period, only 37% of the daily value for calcium was provided and during the same period 86% of the iron was provided.
Obviously, Dr. Atkins thought that was fine because in conjunction with the diet, you are supposed to be taking the vitamin supplement for the Atkins Diet. Even the tablets don’t contain calcium, though. You’ll have to eat one of those delicious Atkins bars to get your daily values of calcium.
At the maintenance stage of the diet, you would be getting over 400% of the daily values for vitamin C, but during the induction period, only 33%. What kind of sense does this make?
I am willing to bet that if someone took the list of normal foods we are supposed to eat to get the RDA of vitamins and minerals and composed a diet with all of those values, that the dieting public would scoop it up. What is so hard about merely eating a balanced diet? Why do we have to go to such ill-advised extremes? I would have to be skeptical of any diet that included with it a recommendation to take vitamin and mineral supplements. It just sounds too hokey to tell people to not eat the foods that contain the vitamins and minerals we need but to instead take them in supplement form and please buy them from me!
If you are going to be on this diet you are going to need a vitamin supplement for the Atkins Diet. Even then though, you aren’t getting all the vitamins and minerals you need on a daily basis and far too much of some like cholesterol and protein. The real key in any diet is balance. Unless you have a medical condition that prevents the absorption of some vitamins you most likely won’t need supplements. Do check with your doctor though before taking a vitamin supplement for the Atkins Diet or any other diet.
