Liberal meat eater

As a staunch defender of the Atkins diet and frequent meat consumer, I have gotten into a lot of arguments. In my latest tirade, I accused a self-proclaimed liberal of acting like a conservative because of her blind devotion to orthodox views about nutrition. She rebutted that most liberals are in fact anti-Atkins, which made no sense to me.\nLiberals are supposed to be the open-minded ones, unrestricted by orthodox and authoritarian views or dogmas. To me, Robert Atkins was someone who embodied liberalism and willing to challenge traditional views. But are liberals in fact against Atkins?\nAlthough I could find no studies linking Atkins supporters with any issue or political party, there seems to be a strong correlation between liberals and Atkins opponents. Across the Internet, liberally slanted blogs bash the Atkins diet while conservatives bash the Atkins bashers.\nFor instance, one conservative writer, Rich Smith, accuses the liberal mainstream media of unfairly demonizing Atkins in a column titled, "Why they hate Atkins: Left opposes this diet because it works." \nOn the other side, an animated video clip depicts a portly woman on Atkins scarfing down bacon like clockwork while watching Fox News and religiously buying into everything it says.\nAnd here in the journalism school, where most of the graduate students say they are liberal, there seems to be very little support for the diet. One colleague emphatically proclaimed that the whole low-carb phenomenon is going to blow up and said, "I will support the food pyramid until I die."\nHmm, that sounds more like blind devotion than the spirit of liberalism to me.\nThe reality is that some of our basic understandings of health and nutrition are not set in stone. In fact, a number of our common beliefs have been scrutinized in recent years. For instance, studies have indicated that margarine is worse for your health than butter, that common cough medicines used for the past 50 years are pretty much worthless and that moderate amounts of sunshine without sunscreen can actually help reduce our overall risk of cancer.\nThe notion that eating fat will make you fat and give you a heart attack has been similarly tenuous. According to a 2001 article published in Science by Gary Taubes entitled "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat," the anti-fat movement, which began in the 1960s, did not have solid science to back it up.\n"They say, 'You really need a high level of proof to change the recommendations,' which is ironic, because they never had a high level of proof to set them," Harvard nutritionist Walter Willett told Taubes. (Willett's proposed changes to the food pyramid are not as extreme as Atkins', but they too are tilted away from refined carbohydrates and sugars.)\nAccording to Taubes, it was then-Sen. George McGovern and a bipartisan staff who initiated turning the low-fat movement into policy. Ironically, the movement was anti-establishment at the time, fueled by a distrust of the medical establishment and food industry. Back then, it was liberal.\nBut the low-fat movement eventually became the establishment, and now it's liberal to fight against it. The notion that fat is evil is so ingrained in us now that it's going to take us a long time to think any other way. In fact, I still hear people at the grocery store saying things like, "Hey those cookies are good for you. They're low in fat!"\nThe establishment may yet turn out to be right and the low-carb phenomenon will blow up. When and if it does, I'll be the first to admit I was misguided. Liberalism is about open-mindedness, and that includes open-mindedness about being wrong.