Promoters of the Atkins diet appear to be backtracking on their advice that people can lose weight while eating as much meat and saturated fat as they want.

The New York Times reports that a top official at Atkins Nutritionals, the company established by the late Dr. Robert C. Atkins to promote his weight-loss products, is now recommending at seminars that dieters should get only 20 percent of their calories from saturated fat.

For years, scientists have criticized the Atkins diet because they say that a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet puts dieters on the road to heart disease and other health woes.

An Atkins spokesman told the Times that the official, Colette Heimowitz, the company's director of research and education, has been giving these seminars for five years and that it was not a radical departure.

The company says that Atkins has always said that people eat other foods, but the Times reports that that message hasn't gotten through to consumers.

According to the newspaper, Atkins faces increased competition from other low-carbohydrate diets, notably the South Beach diet, that recommend less fat.