Limiting carbohydrates may help — but reducing caloric intake is more important.

By Tom Ewing

More than 30 years ago, nutritionist Robert Atkins launched his now-famous “diet revolution,” promising overweight Americans that they could efficiently shed their excess fat by radically reducing — if not entirely halting — their carbohydrate consumption. Obesity most frequently results not from the excessive intake of protein and fat, he contended, but rather from the consumption of starches, cellulose, and refined sugar (which he referred to as “the killer carbohydrate”).

Unlike protein and other dietary components, Dr. Atkins argued, carbohydrate molecules are not efficiently metabolized in the course of routine daily activity. As a result, extra sugar (glucose) produced by digestion of carbohydrates tends to be stored as fat in…

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