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The pyramid is quite cleverly constructed. Mirroring the USDA's Food Guide Pyramid, the Atkins pyramid puts the "foundation" foods at the bottom, indicating that these foods should make up the majority of your diet. On the Atkins pyramid, these foods are eggs, fish, poultry, beef, pork and soy products. Basically, these are the "meats" of the diet. It's no surprise that these are the foundation of the Atkins Food Guide Pyramid, since the Atkins diet is based on avoiding carbohydrates and consuming proteins and dietary sources of fat.

Moving up the pyramid, the next section is made up of vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, salad greens, and so on. Vegetables offer outstanding nutritional benefits, regardless of your dietary strategy. They appear prominently in the Atkins diet because they are rich in fiber, they offer disease-reversing phytochemicals (such as the anti-cancer compounds found in broccoli), they're rich in vitamins and minerals, and they lack insulin-boosting refined carbohydrates. The positioning of vegetables on the Atkins pyramid suggests that people should eat fairly large quantities of these foods, making them their secondary source of food.

Next we have fruits. This smaller size of this level of the pyramid suggests dieters should eat less of these foods, which include avocados, blueberries, strawberries and other fruits. The more a person exercises, the more that can choose higher glycemic index fruits such as cherries and apples.

Higher up the chart, we see oils (from vegetable and seed sources), nuts, legumes and dairy. The oils and nuts are to be used sparingly not because they're unhealthy, but because they pack such high caloric density (they have a lot of calories for their size) and thus are easy to overeat.

At the very top of the pyramid, you'll find whole grain foods like brown rice, barley, and oats. The more a dieter exercises, the more they are allowed to consume from this category, extending their dietary choice to breads and other more processed carbs.

That rounds out the fundamental pyramid structure. But the Atkins pyramid adds a clever mechanism that makes it a real winner when it comes to following today's best nutritional science: additional food choices extend to the right of each food group, allowing the dieter to choose more of these foods as they add exercise. The structure of the diagram correctly implies that people who engage in longer and more frequent exercise can consume a large variety of fruits, nuts and even carbohydrates. This one simple mechanism has extraordinary implications for dieters, which will be discussed later in this report. In short, it's simply brilliant.

The Atkins pyramid also comes with several important guidelines. It says, for example, that the entire diet should have "no added sugars" and "no hydrogenated oils." This is outstanding nutritional advice and, all by itself, would go a long ways towards reducing the presence of chronic disease in affluent societies like the United States.

Added sugars, for example, are well known to promote obesity and diabetes. They've been linked to colon cancer, sharp nutritional deficiencies, mood disorders, ADHD, clinical depression, bone disorders such as osteoporosis, and many more. To see a full list, visit the refined carbohydrates section of Low-Carb Diet Warning.

Hydrogenated oils, for their part, are devastating to human health. Once thought to be harmless, they are now known to ravage the cardiovascular system and promote heart disease, weight gain, and even cancer. Avoiding hydrogenated oils, which are present in virtually all baked goods, margarines and shortening products at every grocery store, is essential for achieving a high degree of health, regardless of a person's weight loss strategy. To see more evidence showing the health damaging effects of hydrogenated oils, visit the hydrogenated oils section of Low-Carb Diet Warning.

That's a wrap of the basic structure of the Atkins Lifestyle Food Guide Pyramid. Now let's take a look at what all this means. First off, there are several important things to notice about this structure.

This article is reprinted from Analysis: The Atkins Lifestyle Food Guide Pyramid, a public education ebook provided free of charge by the non-profit Consumer Wellness Research Center.

Next: Part 3: Unrefined, Unprocessed Foods

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