The Atkins diet
The Atkins Nutritional Approach, popularly known as the Atkins Diet or just Atkins, is the most marketed and well-known of the low-carbohydrate diets. It was adopted by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1960s from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and utilized to resolve his own overweight condition following medical school and graduate medical training. After successfully treating over ten thousand patients, he popularized the Atkins diet in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972. In his revised book, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Atkins updated some of his ideas, but remained faithful to the original concepts.
The Atkins franchise (i.e., the business formed to provide products serving people "doing Atkins") had been highly successful due to the popularity of the diet, and is considered the iconic and driving entity of the larger "low-carb craze". However, various factors have led to its dwindling in success, and the company Atkins Nutritionals of Ronkonkoma, New York, founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July of 2005 and emerged in January 2006. The Atkins logo is still highly visible through licensed-proprietary branding for food products and related merchandise.
