Dr Robert Atkins, creator of the famous low-carbohydrate diet, was clinically obese at the time of his death, according to medical reports made public today.

The New York medical examiner's records, which have been published by the Wall Street Journal, state that Dr Atkins weighed 18 and a half stone when he died last April after being injured in a fall on an icy New York City street.

At 6ft tall, Dr Atkins, 72, would have qualified as obese, according to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's body mass index calculator.

The news calls into question his cause of death and whether Dr Atkins followed the controversial diet, which has reversed conventional wisdom by prescribing meats and cheeses while eschewing starchy foods that contain a lot of carbohydrates.

The examiner's report said that Dr Atkins had suffered a previous heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, all conditions that are related to obesity.

The examiner's office would confirm only that Dr Atkins died of a head injury from the fall.

Dr Atkins's post-mortem report was forwarded to the Journal by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which advocates vegetarian diets and is strenuously opposed to the Atkins diet.

Veronica Atkins, his widow, said that she was outraged the report had been made public and accused critics of her husband's diet of trying to smear his reputation.

She said: "Unscrupulous individuals will continue to twist and pervert the truth in an attempt to destroy the reputation and great work of my late husband.

"These individuals have gone so far as to obtain my husband's personal and confidential medical information from the New York City Medical Examiner's office for distribution to news organisations in direct and knowing violation of federal law.

"Obviously such people will have no trouble picking and choosing bits and pieces of fact and supposition to mislead the world.

"I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet."

Last month, Mrs Atkins demanded an apology from Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, after Mr Bloomberg called her late husband "fat".

Mr Bloomberg made the off-the-cuff comments at a fireman's dinner. He later apologised to Mrs Atkins and offered to buy her a steak and no potatoes meal.

Doctors who are supporters of his diet denied that his death had anything to do with obesity.

Dr Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council, said that his death was related to "cardiomyopathy," probably due to a virus and his weight was due to fluid retention and not diet.

"He had no record of having a heart attack. My understanding is that he had no reported true evidence of classical angina (a pain in the chest that can indicate a blocked artery)," he added.

"He did have a history of irregular heartbeats."

He attributed some of Dr Atkins's weight to being bloated with fluid, common in patients with his condition because a weak heart cannot pump out fluids efficiently.

Throughout most of his life, he weighed "significantly less", Dr Trager said.

In April 2002, a year before he died, Dr Atkins issued a statement saying he was recovering from cardiac arrest related to a heart infection he had suffered from "for a few years." He said it was "in no way related to diet".

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