The Atkins Diet May, proved after all: a low-carb diet and a Mediterranean-style regime helped people lose more weight than a traditional low-fat diet in one of the longest and largest studies to compare the dueling weight-loss techniques.
A bigger surprise: The low-carb diet-cholesterol improved more than the other two. Some critics had predicted the opposite.
"It is a justification," said Abby Bloch of the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Foundation, a group that the philanthropy award Atkins' diet creator and the study was the most important donors.
But all three approaches - the low-carb diet, low-fat diet and a so-called Mediterranean diet - achieved weight loss and improved cholesterol.
The study is remarkable, not only because it took two years, much longer than most, but also because of the huge proportion of people who stuck with the diet - 85 percent.
Researchers at the Atkins Foundation with the idea for the study. But the foundation played no role in the study design or reporting on the results, said the lead author, the Iris Shai Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Other experts said the study - published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine - was very credible.
"This is a very good group of researchers," said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
The research work has been done in a controlled environment - an isolated nuclear research facility in Israel. The 322 participants got their main meal of the day, lunch at a central cafeteria.
"The employee is not easy, go to lunch at a nearby Subway or McDonald's," said Dr. Meir Stampfer, the study's senior author and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the cafeteria, the appropriate foods for each diet were identified with colored points, with red for low-fat, green and blue Mediterranean for low-carb.
As for breakfast and dinner, the dieters were
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