I’ve never had any success with vitamins; I still get sick just as often. Teeth-whitening products have failed me. So has the Atkins diet. Rogaine shampoo? I just grew a little peach fuzz. Using my frequent-flier miles has always been a huge frustration, except for that one time I flew to Fargo, N.D., on a Saturday night in February.

Although the glycemic index (GI) has been around for 20 years, it has been embraced by many food manufacturers since 2003 as a way to give a marketing edge to health or diet products – particularly in the aftermath of the low-carb, Atkins phenomenon. Low glycemic index products are only just gaining momentum.

A full-court press from the animal rights zealots at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) was stopped in its tracks this month ... again. On Sunday, New York Judge Denny Chin threw out PCRM's demand for warning labels on Atkins diet products.

The Atkins Nutritional Approach, popularly known as the Atkins Diet or just Atkins, is the most marketed and well-known low-carbohydrate diet. It was adapted by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1960s from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and utilized to resolve his own overweight condition following medical school and graduate medical training. After successfully treating over ten thousand patients, he popularized the Atkins diet in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972. In his revised book, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Atkins updated some of his ideas, but remained faithful to the original concepts.The Atkins franchise, a business formed to provide products to those individuals on the diet, has been highly successful due to the popularity of the diet, and is considered the iconic and driving entity of the larger "low-carb craze". However, various factors have led to its dwindling success and the company founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989, Atkins Nutritionals of Ronkonkoma, New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July of 2005, two years after the death of Dr. Atkins. The company re-emerged in January 2006, and the Atkins logo is still highly visible through licensed-proprietary branding for food products and related merchandise.