Hello. My name is CJ Segal-Isaacson, EdD, RD. I am a nutrition scientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. I am very interested in scientifically documenting the effects of low carbohydrate weight loss diets and have conducted two previous Internet-based surveys. In the last one, conducted during the summer of 2001, over 6,000 people responded. The results of this study were just presented in October, 2002 at the annual national conference of the American Dietetic Association. I would like to invite you to participate in a brand new study called The CCARB Study. We are looking for people who have been on a low or controlled carbohydrate diet for at least two months in the last two years. By the way, CCARB stands for Controlled Carbohydrate Assessment Registry Bank. The purpose of the CCARB Study is to establish an Internet-based cohort of people who use controlled carbohydrate diets. We plan to follow participants for at least three years each. We are very interested in participants’ dietary and exercise habits as well as their weight and health patterns. Participants will be asked to complete a set of questionnaires (via the Internet) soon after they enroll, three months later and then once a year for three years. We would also very much appreciate it if participants would have their heights and weights measured by their health care providers at baseline and every year. This is an optional requirement, but we hope most participants will do it because it will greatly add to the study’s scientific validity. As you know there are many members of the scientific community who are very skeptical about controlled carbohydrate diets and will take a study with objectively measured weights much more seriously. CCARB participants will receive, in addition to the satisfaction of contributing significantly to scientific knowledge about controlled carbohydrate diets, the following free services: Dietary analyses each time they complete questionnaires Access to a nutritionist to ask questions online Monthly newletters on controlled carbohydrate topics and other health-related topics Controlled carbohdyrate recipes If you are interested in participating or finding out more about the study, please come visit our website at: http://epi.aecom.yu.edu/ccarbs Yours truly, CJ Segal-Isaacson