Slashdot Mirror


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."

1 of 588 comments (clear)

  1. Too simple by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is a bit too simple. Lots of modern food contains so much energy that our internal alarm switches are blown off-line. Therefore, you don't feel full anymore and you keep eating. That is called Insulin resistance (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) It is hard to overeat on apples. It is easy to overeat on sweets.

    Off course, the food industry just loves to create food that makes you keep eating, because that will also make you buy more of it. That is why even organic meat contains sugar and all kinds of syrup nowadays. The first step to a healthy life is to eat real food.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!