Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports on a new study (abstract) showing that low-carb diets have better health benefits than low-fat diets in a test without calorie restrictions. "By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity. While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat. They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,' Dr. Mozaffarian said. 'Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that's a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.' ... In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation and triglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group. Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group."

Comments

The diet is unimportant...

[Karmashock]

Simply eat what your body needs... beyond that, exercise. That is why people are getting fat. Not because they're eating too much but because they're not doing anything.

Look at what Michael Phelps ate. Something like three pizzas a day or something. And he was in great health at the time. Won Olympic gold medals and everything.

The diet is the wrong way around to solve a problem. Which is how to stay healthy without exercising. Now maybe there is a diet that does that but most of them say "oh and exercise"... well, if you exercise the rest isn't important.