THE Atkins diet is fighting back. Stung by mounting public concern about its safety, the corporation behind the low-carbohydrate regime has launched a savage assault on the motives of its critics.

Doctors, scientists and business groups who questioned the diet’s safety and efficacy are putting lives at risk to protect their financial interests, the American company Atkins Nutritionals has alleged.

It claims that the carbohydrate industry, where profits are under threat from the Atkins boom, is waging a cynical war against the diet, misleading the public about the risks.

Lobby groups promoting flour, grain and potatoes, which are restricted under the Atkins regime, are funding research that “attacks the success of their biggest threat, Atkins, under the guise of a scientific presentation,” according to the company.

The Atkins scare, which is based on a “lack of regard for balanced scientific evidence”, is even costing lives, it says, arguing that the publicity is putting people off a plan that could help them to lose weight. The claims have outraged nutritionists and dietitians, who said that their scepticism about the diet was based on an overwhelming scientific consensus. The Atkins corporation is resorting to “slur tactics” to undermine honest scientists, they said, as it cannot produce evidence to rebut their concerns.

The British Nutrition Foundation and the British Dietetic Association both advise against the diet, and the Food Standards Agency this week issued a health warning about low-carbohydrate diets, though it did not name the Atkins regime specifically. Experts also argued that the company, Atkins Nutritionals, is guilty of the very sins it is trying to pin on its critics. The private company, which is thought to turn over at least $100 million a year, is introducing low-carbohydrate snacks in Britain next year. Several supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s and Safeway, have declined to stock them and safety fears could affect sales.

Atkins Nutritionals refused to comment on its plans, or to reveal details of its profits and ownership. It is believed to be 50 per cent owned by Veronica Atkins, the widow of Robert Atkins, who devised the diet and died this year.

The company’s offensive follows a summer of bad publicity for the diet, which has been linked to cancer and heart, kidney and bone disorders. It was also blamed for the death of Rachel Huskey, a 16-year-old American who suffered a heart attack after losing 20lb in six weeks.

The regime, in which dieters swap bread, pasta and potatoes for steak and a full English breakfast, has remained very popular, however, after endorsements by celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Renée Zellweger.

Sales of Atkins’ book recently knocked Harry Potter off the top of the bestseller list, and a poll found that three million Britons have tried it. Atkins executives decided to get tough with their critics this week, as the Flour Advisory Bureau launched Tackling the Weight of the Nation, a report commissioned from Susan Jebb and Toni Steer of the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge. It recommended exercise and a diet low in fat and high in unrefined carbohydrate as the best solution to Britain’s obesity crisis.

The Atkins corporation had already clashed with Dr Jebb, one of Britain’s most respected nutritionists, last month, when she attacked the diet as based on pseudoscience and potentially harmful. It pointed out that she had received a £10,000 grant from the Flour Advisory Bureau to conduct its research, though the MRC retained full independence over its findings, which were also peer-reviewed to guard against bias. This time, it argued that the bureau’s report was putting lives at risk to protect the bread industry.

“The Flour Advisory Bureau has a duty to protect the commercial interests of the companies that fund it, but their lack of regard for balanced scientific evidence is costing lives,” the company said. “Economic factors are the driving force in the issue of nutritional advice, to the detriment of public health. Sensationalist misreporting is at the heart of the war being waged against Atkins.”

It said that the diet could make an important contribution to reducing obesity, which affects 21 per cent of men and 23.5 per cent of women in Britain, and is linked to 8.7 per cent of all deaths. Dr Jebb said there was no question that the report’s scientific integrity had been compromised by their sources of funding. No study had yet shown that the Atkins diet led to long-term weight loss, and substantial doubts remain about its safety. Sarah Stanner, a senior nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, said the attack was designed to shift the emphasis away from scientific scrutiny of the diet’s claims. “It’s an easy slur to make and a very serious one,” she said. “There’s nothing worse you can say to any scientist than that they are not independent. In the current climate, you have to get funding from a variety of sources.”

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