According to the press release, researchers at Johns Hopkins will announce details of an interesting new study on June 3, at the American College of Sports Medicine.

At this time, they aren’t releasing the full research…but the teasers in the press release are already quite interesting. Among them is the following, which compares vascular health and weight loss for groups following a low carb and low fat diet, respectively:

Low-carb dieters showed no harmful vascular changes, but also on average dropped 10 pounds in 45 days, compared to an equal number of study participants randomly assigned to a low-fat diet. The low-fat group, whose diets consisted of no more than 30 percent from fat and 55 percent from carbs, took on average nearly a month longer, or 70 days, to lose the same amount of weight. (emphasis added)

Yep.  Low-carb dieters had improved vascular health and lost in a month the weight it took a low-fat dieter 70 days to lose. Later on, one of the researchers is quoted as saying something many low-carb advocates have been arguing for quite some time:

Stewart [contends] that an over-emphasis on low-fat diets has likely contributed to the obesity epidemic in the United States by encouraging an over-consumption of foods high in carbohydrates.

The press release teases with a bunch of tantalizing information that should be of interest to anyone considering or undertaking a low-carb diet. Heck, from what I gather, this should be of interest to anyone at all who is interested in diet’s relationship to health and weight loss.

I’m pretty excited to get the actual research paper.  Since I didn’t get an invite to the June 3 event (*ahem*), I guess I’ll have to make do for now what what they tease with.

Related Resources:

• John’s Hopkins Press Release
• Johns Hopkins study: Atkins better than standard low-carb diet for losing weight, belly fat (Palm Beach Daily News)