Conventional wisdom tells us that obesity itself is a major cause of clogged arteries—the rationale being that more fat on the body equals more fat in the blood stream equals more fat build-up in the arteries. However, most of the studies that have looked at the relationship between body weight (or body fat) and atherosclerosis—via coronary angiography or by direct examination of artery disease at autopsy—find that fat people are no more likely to have clogged arteries than thin people (4, 11, 27). In some instances results entirely opposite to conventional wisdom are observed. For example, when researchers at the University of Tennessee (4) evaluated coronary angiograms of more than 4,500 men and women, they found that the risk of having a clogged artery actually decreased as body weight increased. In other words, it was the fat men and women who had the cleanest arteries. Although this finding is exceptional, the preponderance of angiography studies of this nature do undermine the notion that obesity inevitably results in clogged arteries.