South Beach Diet The South Beach Diet is a diet plan designed by
cardiologist Arthur Agatston and dietician Marie Almon as an
alternative to low-fat approaches such as the Ornish Diet and
the Pritikin Diet advocated by the American Heart Association in
the 1980s. Although the original purpose of the diet was to
prevent heart disease in Dr. Agatston's own patients, in the
early 2000s, word of the diet spread and quickly gained
popularity as a means to lose weight. History and theory While
Agatston accepted the prevailing wisdom among cardiologists that
a low-fat diet would reduce cholesterol and prevent heart
disease, he found that, in practice, patients had a difficult
time sticking to the diet. To explain this failure, he turned to
the scientific work with insulin resistance which led David J.
Jenkins to develop the glycemic index in the early 1980s. When
sugar enters the bloodstream, the pancreas secretes insulin
which triggers cells to absorb the sugar. Many years of
introducing quick bursts of sugar would