I wouldn't go so far as to say low-fat weight-loss diets "cause" overweight. What I would say is that they aggravate the problem in that they continue the insulin cycle and can cause the body to go into starvation mode if they are low-calorie. So what happens is that your body then seems to more efficiently store what you eat. (One of the times I lost weight, I was eating 800 calories every OTHER day. There were plenty of weeks where I lost nothing!) In other words, if you put someone who isn't overweight on a low-fat diet, I'm not sure much would happen. If you put someone who's already overweight on a low-fat diet, it might help at first, but then in my experience very strenuous daily exercise and Herculean caloric restriction are needed in order to continue weight loss. Also, much of the weight loss will be muscle. And if it's done repeatedly (I've lost significant weight three times through this type of dieting), the body seems to learn how not to lose weight, or even gain, on a low-fat caloric intake that certainly seems like it should induce weight loss. What I find disagreeable about the study (at least what you've quoted) is that it "proves" that low-fat diets cause weight loss, but doesn't say if the people studied were overweight. The overall implication is that low-fat = weight loss. But the fact of the matter is who cares if a diet causes fit people to lose weight? It's meaningless, as they don't care, and I truly think it means nothing to overweight people. The simple fact that we are overweight points to a physical difference between "us" and "them". And if anyone wants to argue that it's caloric intake, then I defy them to explain Ray Audette and his 6500 calories a day to me. (In fact, I also have found that I can eat as much as I want and maintain, I just can't seem to lose anymore.) Also, if we're going on the assumption that overweight is caused by an out of control insulin cycle (this is my working assumption), and that insulin plays a significant role in cholesterol regulation as Dr. Atkins postulates, then this study is also not necessarily inherently valid for overweight people as regards cholesterol either (if the subjects were fit), at least insofar as the overweight person and the fit person differ in insulin production. In fact, off the top of my head, if insulin has the negative impact on cholesterol that Atkins says it does, then putting a very overweight person on a low-fat diet could maybe worsen cholesterol, unless the diet is so calorie-restricted that there are not enough sugars and starches going into the body to trigger the kinds of insulin releases that were happening before the diet. An "ad-libitum" low-fat diet is exactly what many of us with the weight problems were eating before switching diets anyway! That's how we got fat! Or at least it's how I did... Boy, I can sure ramble... Take care, John Pavao ---------- I think "ad libitum" means "as much as you want", i.e. enough to satisfy your hunger. I was intrugued by that article because it seems to contradict the commonly accepted assumption that overweightness is caused by low-fat diets.