Name:______________________________ Date:__________ Sec:________

Lesson 4.3
Diets: Which One is Best?

Based upon data from: Lagiou et al., “Low carbohydrate-high protein diet
and incidence of cardiovascular diseases in Swedish women: prospective
cohort study”. British Medical Journal 2012; 344:e4026

Hoevenaar-Blom et al., “Mediterranean Style Diet and 12-Year Incidence of

Cardiovascular Diseases: The EPIC-NL Cohort Study”, Public Library of
Science (PLoS) One, 2012; 7(9):e45458

The “Atkins” diet was developed 40 years ago with the purpose of controlling
satiety by increasing consumption of fats and protein while severely limiting
consumption of carbohydrates and sugars. While this diet has become very
popular in Western countries, many people have questioned whether unrestricted
access to protein and saturated fats can be healthy.

On the other hand, the "Mediterranean" diet does not limit certain macronutrients
but instead emphasizes eating foods rich in unsaturated fats found in plant oils
and fish instead of foods high in saturated fats. Advocates of this diet argue that
consumption of saturated fats, commonly found in foods of animal origin high in
protein and fat (which are encouraged in the Atkins diet), will lead to an
increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Questions:

1. Based upon your understanding of diets and nutrition, what hypothesis

would you make about the two diets?

2. How would you set up an experiment to test your hypothesis?

• Who would you include in the study?
• What would the conditions of the study be?
• What would you measure?
 Based on your hypothesis what would you predict?

3. Draw a bar graph showing the results you would expect to see if your
hypothesis is correct.

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4. Prepare to discuss your graph with the rest of the class and provide
reasoning for the relationship between diet and cardiovascular disease.
 Real data from two studies!
The two publications we will study examined two cohorts of people based upon
their adherence to an Atkins-like diet or a Mediterranean style diet. Both
publications examined the relationship between the diet and cardiovascular
diseases.

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This figure shows data from two studies, one that studied people who ate the
Atkins diet and the other looking at people that ate the Mediterranean diet.

5. What does the data suggest?

6. Is this consistent with your predictions? If not, why might this be?

7. What additional information would allow you to make more conclusions

about the data?
Based on your hypothesis what would you predict?
The two publications we are studying examined two cohorts of people based
upon their adherence to an Atkins-like diet or a Mediterranean style diet. Both
publications examined the relationship between the diet and cardiovascular
diseases.

8. How would you determine whether someone adhered to their diet?

9. Draw a line graph showing the results you would expect to see if your initial
hypothesis was correct.

Note there are two Y-axes on the graph, one for Mediterranean and one for
Atkins. The X-axis measures how well members adhere to a certain diet,
with increasing adherence being observed from left to right.

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11. How does diet adherence affect health outcomes?

12. Is this consistent with your initial prediction?

13. Do the new results affect your thoughts about the initial data (the bar
graph)?
Name: _____________________________ Date: ___________ Sec: ________

Lesson 4.3: Homework Questions

14. If you were a doctor and a patient was worried about the CVD risk, which
diet would you recommend to them?

15. If you were responsible for marketing the Atkins diet, how could you use
these studies to your advantage?