Australia diet wizards top Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter (Reuters)

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Forget Atkins, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig -- a new diet craze has emerged in Australia that has toppled Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and J.K. Rowling's latest Harry Potter novel from the top of the bestseller list.

Even more surprisingly, this low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet was created by government scientists.

Although best known internationally as a sports-crazy country full of fit, bronzed youth, Australia is in reality battling the bulge as it challenges the United States for the title of world's fattest nation.

With fat Aussies estimated to be costing the country more than A$1 billion a year and a plethora of diets flooding the market, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) decided to research a variety of diets.

The result -- the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet book, which has already sold 370,000 copies. Publishers are targeting sales of 1 million in Australia, a country of just 20 million people.

Publisher Penguin Books said it was already one of the best sellers in Australian history and interest had already been expressed by more than 10 countries including Britain, the United States and China.

Author Manny Noakes said the diet had appealed to a much wider audience than expected with people using it as a guide to good nutrition, not just losing weight. The book advocates regular exercise and allows people to calculate how to lose weight according to their metabolic rate.

"The credibility of the CSIRO brand is also very important in a marketplace that is very crowded with a lot of information on weight management," Noakes told Reuters via telephone from her office in the South Australian capital, Adelaide.

"The timing was also probably pretty spot on, in that there is a huge amount of community concern about obesity and the third thing is that ... people were looking for something new."

She said the diet had found a niche as people lose interest in the Atkins Diet made popular by Hollywood celebrities.

RED MEAT RISK?

Noakes said the CSIRO diet evolved from initial studies of low-fat diets.

"Not surprising to us, but surprising to many others, it didn't really matter how much fat was in the diet. It was how many calories that was important," Noakes said.

"So we developed our own dietary approach that had a bit more protein, a bit less carbohydrate and was nutritionally complete."

But while the diet has found plenty of fans, it has also come under fire for recommending nearly half a pound of red meat be eaten four times a week.

Dr John Tickell, who appeared on an Australian television program that helped local celebrities lose weight and get fit and is also promoting his own diet book, has said the CSIRO diet promotes dangerously high levels of red meat.

"The American Cancer Society and the European Cancer Society .... (are) telling us there is a really obvious relationship between increasing levels of red meat consumption and bowel cancer," Tickell told Australian television recently. "I am just presenting the facts. I am concerned Aussies need to be protected from themselves -- we are a meat-eating nation."

But Noakes is unconcerned and said the criticism of red meat has been overstated.

"Red meat in Australia can be lean. It's very nutritious and it contributes a lot to a low-calorie diet. A low-calorie diet that doesn't have more protein foods, including red meat, is not going to be a nutritionally adequate diet," Noakes said.

COUCH POTATO SPORTS FANS

Despite Australia's dominance in sports such as swimming and cricket, many more Aussies are struggling to drag themselves away from watching sports on television than actually playing them.

More than 60 percent of adults, or 7 million people, are overweight with 2 million of those obese, while nearly a third of children are obese or overweight.

"It's escalating quite a lot," Noakes said. "We're not as big as Americans, but we are approaching it and if we don't do something the impact on our health system will be enormous."

About 64.5 percent of adult Americans, or 119 million people, are overweight or obese and the rate has been rising steadily.

Although difficult to estimate, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that overweight and obese people cost Australia more than A$1.2 billion in 2000/01.

"It's going to cost more for medical care, and our health system, which up until now has been one of the best in the world, is really starting to show signs that it has been subjected to this burden of obesity," she said.