THE company behind the low-carbohydrate Atkins Diet, which had Americans gorging guiltlessly on bunless burgers, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The privately owned Atkins Nutritionals Inc, founded by the diet guru Robert Atkins, said that it would slim down its business because of a big fall in demand and increased competition.

Atkins had claimed that some carbohydrates in particular led to weight gain and that saturated fat had been overrated as a problem. At the height of the low-carbohydrate fad last year, an estimated 9 per cent of Americans cut out pasta, potatoes and bread on Atkins or similar protein-packed regimens, such as the South Beach Diet. First published in 1972, Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution has sold 15 million copies. The updated New Diet Revolution has sold ten million.

Supermarket shelves were full of low-carbohydrate products such as Ben & Jerry’s Karb Karma ice-cream. Select packaged goods were endorsed with Atkins signature red “A”.

The TV Food Network broadcast a “Low Carb and Loving It” show, and Martha Stewart Living magazine carried recipes for “breadless stuffing”.

But the low-carbohydrate diet fad fizzled out as health experts raised concerns over coronary artery disease — and Americans reverted to their traditional cuisine.

“We are a meat and potatoes country. We do not like to think we are, but we are,” said Harry Balzer, of the NPD Group, which monitors Americans’ eating habits. “We like potatoes, we like bread and we like meat. Atkins was asking us to cut back on two of them.”

The latest figures show that only 2.2 per cent of adults are following a low-carbohydrate diet.

The Atkins Diet suffered a wave of adverse publicity after the death of Robert Atkins in April 2003 after he slipped on an icy pavement near his home in New York.

A leaked post-mortem examination showed that Atkins, 72, had a history of heart trouble, including congestive heart failure and high blood pressure. It also put his weight at more than 18st (114kg) — considered obese for a 6ft man. The figure is disputed by his widow, who says it was magnified by fluids pumped into him during nine days in intensive care.

The diet ran into further trouble in America when Bill Clinton said on television, after having quadruple heart bypass surgery, that he wished he had forgone his low-carbohydrate diet of steaks and cheeseburgers in favour of a low-fat regimen.

Last year a dieter filed a law suit claiming that the diet had caused blocked arteries in his heart. Jody Gorran said that his cholesterol soared after he began eating “mayonnaise with everything” in line with the diet’s rules.

After undergoing angioplasty to reopen his arteries, he started eating mostly fruits, vegetables, grains and lean meats. His cholesterol fell to a healthy level in two months, he claimed.

Backed by a vegan activist group, Mr Gorran is demanding that Atkins add health warnings to its low-carbohydrate food. The firm calls the suit “frivolous”. The company, founded by Atkins in 1989, developed 150 low-carbohydrate versions of starchy foods such as ice-cream, muffins and bagels.

But it said yesterday that it would in future focus on its successful low-carbohydrate nutrition bars and milk shakes.

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