The verdict is in: those simple carbohydrates we've been living on are killing us. For good health, we've got to get our blood sugar under control and stop the incessant cravings. Or so says Dr Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet. The first half of the book details the science behind the diet. Most of the explanations revolve around why things you thought were healthy--orange juice, wholemeal bread, carrots--are actually evil. To avoid blood sugar surges, Agatston created a modified carbohydrate plan, recommending plenty of high-fibre food, lean protein and healthy fat and reducing bread, rice, pasta and fruit. Major differences from other diets include a lack of concern over portion size and a serious indifference to exercise. Feeling full while on a diet is a beautiful thing, but it seems odd that a cardiologist buries his exercise recommendations in a solitary sentence.

The last half of the book covers his three-stage plan; daily diets are mixed with recipes, some of which are from South Beach restaurant chefs. The most restrictive period lasts just two weeks, enough time to stabilise your urges and lose a few pounds; stage two adds fruits and a handful of other carbs, while stage three is meant to last the remainder of your life, with occasional lapses for white bread or birthday cake.

While the diet is sound, the book could be better organised. The first half mixes scientific study with anecdote in a seemingly random way, while the mix of meal plans and recipes can be confusing. Still, the recipes are varied and tasty and you'll never feel deprived, unless you currently happen to live by bread alone. --Jill Lightner

This is an excellent diet plan, and really does work. I have just started it myself and lost 3 kg in the first week, with minimal modifications to my lifestyle.

What I really like about this diet is that for the first 2 weeks my wife is cooking bacon & eggs for me for breakfast each day, and I am losing weight while eating this! Great salads for lunch, stir-fry or salad for tea. Very tasty food even in the first phase.

Contrary to a previous reviewer, there is a reasonable amount of scientific backing given for the diet. Remember this was designed by a cardiologist for heart patients, it is healthy and has been clinically tested. It is not a less strict version of the Atkins diet, rather I see it as the sensible median between the crazy extremes of the Atkins diet, low fat diets and all the other crazy recommendations you get from different people. Here a doctor has taken the good points from all these diets, left out the bad points, and made a sensible diet in the middle where all things are taken in moderation, but some things are more moderated than others (i.e. you CAN have potatoes, bread and those carbohydrates after the first 2 weeks, but must just moderate how much you have - very sensible). It is designed for real people and is easy to follow, and Dr Agatston realises you will want a treat sometimes and allows for that.

I would agree though that the book is not particularly well organised, and could have been written better. The recipes are interesting but are designed by chefs and often are too complicated for normal living. You will need to take the basic principles, allowed & not allowed foods, some hints from the recipes and meal plans given, then use your imagination. This is great though as it allows you to adapt it to your own lifestyle - if you don't eat fish you don't have to for example.

This is the first diet I have found that made good scientific sense and agreed with how I already understood the body to work. I learnt a lot more about my body through reading it and now understand sugar and insulin a lot better.

Highly recommended. As it is not well organised you MUST read the whole book (not all the recipes & meal plans though of course) before starting to ensure you understand it well.

I came across the South Beach by accident, but it certainly appeared to be useful - do they all? Lose weight, 8 to thirteen pounds in two weeks, and lose it from around your waist. Too good to be true? I'd never been on a real diet so I thought it was worth checking out - I was sceptical. We (wife and me) were going to a wedding of some very special friends in two weeks time and we both wanted and needed to lose some weight. We bought the book, it has all sorts of encouraging stories, and so we gave it a bash. I also told a couple of people at work about it. We did stick to the diet, which wasn't all that hard to be honest. Ditching alcohol for a fortnight was a real, REAL challenge, but I was interested to see if I could do it - "I can do without drink, although I haven't done for a while..." - maybe you know the idea? First day - lost a pound, second day the same. And I kept losing it, although I had a couple of days when nothing much happened weight-wise. End of fortnight - 9lbs lighter, and from all the right places. Wife and friends at work lost more - typical. Went to wedding - lots (yes LOTS) of alcohol and good food. Weighed myself afterwards expecting to have put on lots of weight and I was not much heavier than the last day of the diet. We were going away the following week, so we stuck to phase one and continued to lose weight. Phase one is supposedly losing a chunk of weight fairly quickly, then phase two is slower weight loss to the weight you want to be, with phase three being 'stay at the weight you want'. It works. I doubt I'll ever be the person they'd want to quote in the book as I use the diet a bit haphazardly - I enjoy the meals, but with a glass of wine or two, or three. I play snooker once a week and have a few pints, but I'm still much lighter than when I started, and I know that I can lose the critical pounds if I have to by sticking with it. Maybe I'll get to the end of phase one and into phase two and really lose the weight I should. Apparently all sorts of other good things will have happened to me health-wise as it's not an Atkins-type weight loss crash diet, but rather a healthier way of eating. It worked and it's working for me (and the others who are trying it, who are really looking good), and it hasn't been a seven day wonder. It's got to be worth a few quid to buy the book, and it's not a bad read on its own. The recipes are better than they sound, and it's not all grim, boring stuff. Give it a bash.

My main reason for buying the book was trying to find an alternative to the Atkins. I only wanted to loose 1 stone. I just wanted to get back into my Diesel jeans with a 30 waist that I've not been able to wear for 2 years. But at the same time, my sister reminded me to get my heart checked out as my mother died when she was just 12 years old than I am now (33). This book provided me with the answers to both problems, a way to loose the weight and change my diet forever to something healthier for my heart. I have now lost the stone I wanted in just 8 weeks. I went straight to phase 2 as I didn't want to loose the weight too fast. I now get my 5 portions of fruit/veg everyday. I no longer get indigestion, ever. It does loose a star though for being poorly written. You do need to use a bit of intelligence to work out what he is trying to advocate sometimes. For those that need it perfectly laid out in black and white this could cause a bit of confusion.

I was really enthused on reading this book and quickly tried it out - result 7lbs off after 10 days which is good but not as dramatic as I had hoped and, as I go into below, not as easy as I expected.

The best thing about this diet is that it's healthy. It was designed to lower cholesterol and other nasties in your blood, not to lose weight. But it does both.

It is a really refreshing look at diets and I think that it won't be a passing fad but the diet of the future. Lets face it, existing diets aren't working for the population as a whole - people are getting fatter. As he explains, some fat is good for you - like olive oil etc whereas processed carbs don't satisfy your hunger. The result is that restricting fat whilst consuming carbs isn't an easy way to lose weight. So here your aloud good fats and have to exclude bad carbs. Sounds pretty balanced to me.

For the first 2 weeks though you have to severely restrict your carb intake: no bread, biscuits, alcohol, fruit, not even cereal. Despite what he says this IS a low-carb time! As the book promised, I didn't really feel hungry during this phase but I did REALLY miss my carbohydrates. It's also difficult to keep up if you are away from home. Breakfasts were incredibly dull - bacon and eggs, quiche, omelette....all of which I like but started to get really sick of every morning. I even managed to go off lean steak in the evening because I was eating it so frequently. I lasted 10 days on this phase as I couldn't face a further weekend. If you start the diet, I'd recommend starting it before a weekend so that you come off it (2 weeks later) before a weekend and the tricky weekend days don't coincide with the tricky end of phase 1 days.

Also, buy yourself a good book as you'll have plenty of time sitting on the toilet to read it (things went a lot slower without my All Bran...)

Although I found the first phase frustrating, it worked. And the weight has stayed off.

In general I liked the set-up of the book giving the background to the diet, the "rules" (of which there are few) and some pretty convincing background to the health benefits which contribute to the weight loss you will experience. He's right when he says that most low-fat processed foods have been pumped up with sugar or other carbs - check the labels for yourself, I did.

After selling 5 million copies though you think he would have proof read the recipes by now, as there are some annoying contradictions: the text says to enjoy full fat mayo, caffeinated coffee but not a drop of alcohol in phase 1, whilst the recipes and meal plans include low fat mayo, de-caffeinated coffee, and some alcohol.

On the whole, the South Beach diet isn't an extreme "low-fat, high-carb" of most diets or the other extreme "no-carb high-fat" diet of Atkins but a sensible balance between the two. If you want to improve your blood chemistry, lose some weight, improve your cardiac health and find out how some accepted nutritional advice isn't so smart, try the South Beach diet. It has this layman convinced.

I have to admit I had high expectations of this book based on reviews I had read, which ultimately were not met. In many ways this is a less strict variant of the Atkins diet and, having tried many diets over the years, I would also say it bears a striking resemblance to the old Weight Watchers plan from the 80s in being low carb.

So why the low rating you may ask? Not because of the similarities to any previous plans, but rather the quality of the content. The instructions for the plan are contained in the first 98 pages of the book, and the other 200+ are merely menu plans and recipes. It seems that the recipes/menu plans were devised by a different individual to the instructions as there is much conflicting information between the two eg. instructions say dairy is to be avoided in Phase I, but the menus include dairy products. There are quite a few other inconsistencies.

My main criticism has to be the menu plans themself. Our household enjoys cooking with fresh ingredients, so cooking per se presents no problem, however the menu plans leave a lot to be desired. I, myself, cannot tolerate eggs and yet every breakfast menu in Phase I includes eggs, with no indication of what would be a suitable substitute. Indeed, no instructions on substitution are provided at all. I'm also not a fan of ricotta so that too is a non-starter. Many of the ingredients are given with an American audience in mind - what may be cheap and easily obtained in the Miami area will not necessarily be so in other parts of the world. Some adaptation of the plan/menus before marketing the diet internationally would have helped in this respect.

The short main information section is padded out with testimonials, and there is no heavyweight scientific evidence to back the plan. There is also limited information provided on glycemic index values for which I would have expected a larger list.

The one redeeming feature had to be the cardiologists view of blood chemistry and it's relationship with carbohydrates. To be honest I didn't find the argument convincing. The main rationale was that a high carb diet makes a dieter less likely to succeed since an intake of carbs increases blood glucose, causing an increase in insulin production. The insulin breaks down the glucose and the corresponding fall in blood glucose then makes the dieter crave carbs thus leading to diet failure. Faced with the prospect of limiting rice, potatoes, and bread forever more (even on Phase III maintenance these would still be occasional treats advised as to be avoided) I would advocate everything in moderation. Many dieters do succeed whilst still eating carbs. I am currently overweight because my overall intake exceeded my body's requirements. I'll stick to Weight Watchers thank you very much - it's working so far and allows total flexibility.

Incidentally, one of the reasons given for Weight Watchers moving away from the type of diet advocated in this book was due to women developing gallstone problems. The long term effects of the South Beach Diet have yet to be established and I'd rather not be one of the guinea pigs.