Compared head-to-head against three other diet plans, the Atkins diet has come out on top. In one of the largest studies to date, overweight women lost most weight on the popular low-carbohydrate diet. The effect was small, however, and it is not clear that the diet works in the way its inventor claimed.
The Atkins diet replaces carbohydrates with fat and protein. Christopher Gardner and his colleagues at Stanford University in California asked 311 overweight women aged between 20 and 50 to follow either Atkins or one of three other popular diets: Zone, which cuts carbs less severely than Atkins;…
