Now, you can, of course, subtract the fiber grams from the total carbohydrate count, but the other contention is pure nonsense. With no science behind them, they contend that, because glucose and insulin don't rise much, or at all, over fasted, baseline values, the "carb" involved in this "non-response" is "good," even though the digested carb is present in one's blood. But, the position taken by the marketers is that it simply no longer exists -- at all. This is what they mean when they say a carb has no impact. One's glucose level doesn't have to rise for glucose to be present, and it's the presence of glucose that we want to minimize and avoid.

This is going to turn really ugly; the confusion will grow and grow, but the hucksters will not release their death grip on the consumer's wallets. The Atkins boys did $100 mil in food sales last year and project $200 mil this year.

So, as unknowing as Atkins was, his new team knows far less.

So, I went to press, in October 2002, without knowing that the seeds of this Scam had been planted and I became aware of it recently and did my homework to understand what it was that the marketers were now doing in an effort to allow consumers to eat carbs while on a low-carb diet; also to make sure that they could extract the maximum amount of money that they could from consumers' wallets.

But, it gets worse.