Stay Away from Potato Chips!

LOS ANGELES -- Blame the potato chip. It's the biggest demon behind that pound-a-year weight creep that plagues many of us, a major diet study found. Bigger than soda, candy and ice cream.

And the reason is partly that old advertising cliche: You can't eat just one.

"They're very tasty and they have a very good texture. People generally don't take one or two chips. They have a whole bag," said obesity expert Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer of the St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.

What we eat and how much of it we consume has far more impact than exercise and most other habits do on long-term weight gain, according to the study by Harvard University scientists. It's the most comprehensive look yet at the effect of individual foods and lifestyle choices like sleep time and quitting smoking.

The results were in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors analyzed changes in diet and lifestyle habits of 120,877 people from three long-running medical studies.

All were health professionals and not obese at the start.

Their weight was measured every four years for up to two decades, and they detailed their diet on questionnaires.

On average, participants gained nearly 17 pounds over the 20-year period.

For each four-year period, food choices contributed nearly 4 pounds. Exercise, for those who did it, cut less than 2 pounds.

Potato chips were the biggest dietary offender. Each daily serving containing 1 ounce (about 15 chips and 160 calories) led to a 1.69-pound uptick over four years.

That's compared to sweets and desserts, which added 0.41 pound.

Soda added a pound over four years.

Eating more fruits and vegetables and other unprocessed foods led to less weight gain, probably because they are fiber-rich and make people feel fuller.

For each four-year period, these factors had these effects on weight:

» An alcoholic drink a day, 0.41-pound increase.

» Watching an hour of TV a day, 0.31-pound increase.

» Recently quitting smoking, 5-pound increase.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and a foundation. Several researchers reported receiving fees from drug and nutrition companies.

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