SamAdams, first off Atkins is not a fad diet, this is how people ate until the advent of low fat/high carb quackery. It is low fat that is the fad and it is low fat/high carb that has caused an epidemic of obesity and Diabetes II in this country. Europeans do not consume refined carbs as 50% of thier diet as we do here. Many have high fat diets. Tehy don't have the obesity that we have here.
Further, the only food group that Atkins bans is the SUGAR food group. Whole grains are allowed. And refined sugar is BAD for you. There is absolutely no use for sugar in your diet - it only causes harm.
And Atkins does a whole lot more than weight loss. It is shown to reduce cholesterol levels, cure hypoglycemia, diabetes II and obesity.
If you wanted to find out the best way to make people fat, who would you consult? One industry has spent millions and millions of dollars studying this question, and that's the cattle and hog industry. Why? Because for them, learning the quickest way to fatten an animal leads to the highest profits.
So how do they do it? Do they feed their livestock diets high in fat? Do they put out tubs of butter and ice cream to get their animals nice and plump? No! The cattle industry knows that the quickest way to fatten cows and hogs is to restrict their activity, not let them roam on the range (sort of like our couch potatoes), and feed them lots and lots of low fat, complex carbohydrates, in the form of grain.