I just received and read the 1953 article by A.W. Pennington in NEJM, in which he describes the principles of his dietary treatment of obesity. As Anchell states in _The Steak Lovers' Diet_, Pennington's theory is indeed that, for reasons unknown, obese people have higher levels of pyruvate, which interferes with the mobilization of stored fat. Thus, for Pennington, obesity is a disorder of fat mobilization more than fat storage. The article is in fact an interesting overview of the thinking about obesity at the time, but the most striking thing to me is that Pennington's main argument is that it is *ketosis* that corrects the fat mobilization problem. The foods that he lists are indeed the Anchell non-meat foods, but he doesn't say anything about them other than that using these foods in amounts of no more than 60g of carb per day achieves ketosis in most people. So, there is some dissonance between what Pennington says and what Anchell says, since liberal use of potatoes could easily push one over 60g of carbs. Pennington mentions in passing (This was before the low-fat anti-Atkins era) that the ketogenic diet is protein-sparing and generally reduces cholesterol, over the course of time. He claims a typical reduction of total cholesterol of 51mg/dl after a year. Todd Moody [log in to unmask]