What percentage of protein, carbohydrates, and fat is healthiest?
Miriam E. Nelson, PhD, of Tufts University and the best-selling author of the Strong Women book series, responds: If you’re overwhelmed by all the diet recommendations available in books, on the Internet, in the news, and in magazines, you’re not alone. Ultimately, you simply want sound guidelines that tell you how much of which types of food are good for overall health. Right? Fortunately, nutrition scientists have been hard at work to provide those answers—and with success. In one study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005, researchers in Boston examined the weight-loss and heart-health effects of four popular diets—Atkins, Zone, Weight Watchers, and Ornish—on 160 overweight men and women. These diets range from one extreme to another: Atkins is high in fat and protein, yet low in carbohydrates; Ornish is very low in fat and high in carbohydrates; and the other two diets fall somewhere in between. After one year, the participants had lost 5 to 7 pound
