quite true, but HIGHLY MISLEADING HOGWASH
the metabolism setpoint amongst people varies significantly:
obesity is not caused by eating too much, obesity is caused by having eaten too much in the past, in particular, having eaten TOO MANY CARBOHYDRATES. Atkins likens this effect to a rubber band -- if you force too many carbs into your system the metabolism's carb processing machinery (and by implication the insulin system) *breaks*, perhaps for good and you end up obese.
The hunter gatherers ate FAR, FAR fewer carbs than modern folks, but learned how to adapt to eat wheat -- none-the-less lived short and unhealthy lives dying from disease, with the teeth to show it. The hunters were far healthier (even when dying young at the hands of a sabre tooth tiger or whatever).
The key is that if, as a child you eat too much sugar and/or carbs, your body passes the point at which you can safely process carbohydrates -- and you become obese, and from there on losing weight becomes extremely difficult for most people.
Only shallow surface thinkers like you would still fall for the FDA bullcrap that the Archer Daniels Midland inspired food triangle is the gospel and fat people are all lazy.
get a life...
chilepepper's post here started out so good but should have stopped after the first few sentences.
No one can know how healthy hunter-gatherers were back in the days of the La Brea tar pits, but today their low life expectancy has very little to do with being eaten by vertibrate predators. As for Atkins, check out Michael Fumento, a real health conservative. To paraphrase, you'll lose weight if you cut out two isles of the supermarket, but it doesn't matter which two. What bugs me about Atkins is not the diet but the know-it-all style of his writings. Of course, it may take one to know one ;-)