Kekwick and Pawan then replicated a study they had previously done on animals and found the same phenomenon with humans: A diet of 1,000 calories worked well for weight loss so long as carbohydrate intake was low, while a high-carbohydrate 1,000-calorie regimen took off very little weight.' They then showed that their subjects did not lose at all on a so-called " balanced " diet of 2,000 calories. But, when their diet contained primarily fat and very little carbohydrate, these same obese subjects could lose, even when they ate as many as 2,600 calories a day. The difference in weight loss between the two programs comes close to being one-half pound per day. Despite the Middlesex doctors ' impeccable reputations, the majority of their colleagues remained skeptical, given their " calorie-is-acalorie " mind set. They set out to disprove this intellectual bomb that Kekwick and Pawan had dropped on them.
Among other things, critics claimed that the impressive results of a low-carbohydrate diet were merely water loss. However, Kekwick and Pawan did water-balance studies that showed water loss to be only a small part of the total weight lost. Kekwick and Pawan then embarked on a twoyear study of mice in a metabolic chamber. By measuring the loss of carbon in the feces and urine, they were able to show that the mice on the high-fat diet excreted considerable unused calories in the form of ketone bodies, as well as citric, lactic and pyruvic acids. At the end of the study period, they analyzed the fat content of the animals ' bodies and found significantly less fat on the mice that had been fed a high-fat, lowcarbohydrate diet.
Perhaps the most provocative aspect of Kekwick and Pawan ' s work is that during the time they were proving the metabolic advantage of a low-carbohydrate diet, they detected and extracted a substance from the urine of people on the regimen. When that substance was injected into mice, it caused the same metabolic results they had observed in the mice on low-carbohydrate diets, indicating that fat was " melting " off their bodies. The carcass fat decreased dramatically, the ketone and free fatty-acid levels rose and, most significantly, the excretion of unused calories via urine and feces rose from a normal ten percent to thirty-six percent. They named this substance fat-mobilizing substance( FMS).
Kekwick and Pawan attributed hormonal properties to FMS. Unfortunately, their findings on FMS have never been investigated by scientists. But I am hopeful that research will be underwritten that will seek to duplicate and investigate further this phenomenon. I intend to do my part, through the newly formed Dr. Robert C. Atkins Foundation, which will sponsor further research on the metabolic advantage and other aspects of controlled carbohydrate nutrition.
Now let ' s look at some other research that supports the fat-burning theory, this time from the Oakland Naval Hospital. Impressed with the Kekwick and Pawan success, Frederick Benoit and his associates decided to compare a 1,000calorie, 10-grams-of-carbohydrate, high-fat diet with fasting( the same principle that Kekwick and Pawan found most effective), using seven men weighing between 230 and 290 pounds. They used state-of-the-art body composition technology. After ten days, the fasting subjects lost 21 pounds on average, but most of that was lean body weight; only 7.5 pounds was body fat. However, on the controlled carbohydrate regimen over the same period of time, 14 of the 14.5 pounds lost was body fat. Think of it. By eating foods low in carbohydrate and high in dietary fat, subjects burned their fat stores almost twice as fast as when they ate nothing at all!
50