According to a new study from the National Institutes of Health, a diet that reduces carbohydrates in favour of fat — including the saturated fat in meat and butter — improves nearly every health measurement, from reducing our waistlines to keeping our arteries clear, more than the low-fat diets that have been recommended for generations.
"The medical establishment got it wrong," says cardiologist Dennis Goodman, director of Integrative Medicine at New York Medical Associates. "The belief system didn't pan out."
It's not the conclusion you would expect given the NIH study's parameters. Lead researcher Lydia Bazanno, of the Tulane University School of Public Health, pitted this high-fat, low-carb diet against a fat-restricted regimen prescribed by the National Cholesterol Education Program.
One year later, the high-fat, low-carb group had lost three times as much weight — 12 pounds compared with four — and that weight loss came from body fat, while the low-fat group lost muscle. Even more persuasive were the results of blood tests meant to measure the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The high-fat group, despite eating nearly twice as much saturated fat, still saw greater improvements in LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.
This was enough to improve their scores on the Framingham Risk Calculator, a tool for predicting 10-year risk of heart attack. The low-fat group, by contrast, saw no improvement on their Framingham scores. "I think the explanation lies in how the low-fat dieters filled the hole left by fat — they just ate more carbs," Bazanno says.
One year later, the high-fat, low-carb group had lost three times as much weight — 12 pounds compared with four — and that weight loss came from body fat, while the low-fat group lost muscle. Even more persuasive were the results of blood tests meant to measure the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The high-fat group, despite eating nearly twice as much saturated fat, still saw greater improvements in LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.
This was enough to improve their scores on the Framingham Risk Calculator, a tool for predicting 10-year risk of heart attack. The low-fat group, by contrast, saw no improvement on their Framingham scores. "I think the explanation lies in how the low-fat dieters filled the hole left by fat — they just ate more carbs," Bazanno says.
How a fatty pork chop can trump pasta begins with the fact that our bodies don't process calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates in the same way. "When we eat carbs, they break down into sugar in the blood; that's true of whole grains, too, though to a lesser extent," says Jeff Volek, a leading low-carb researcher at Ohio State University. The body responds with the hormone insulin, which converts the extra blood sugar into fatty acids stored in the body fat around our middles.
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Eddie
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