From my initial reading of the whole report, they considered low carbohydrate as anyone consuming less that 40% of their calories from carbs. It does not follow that consuming 20% of you calories from carbs is detrimental to your mortality. In fact only one of their corroborating studies examined carb intake below 30%.
They say there is a socio-economic spread in the cohort but no indication of whether there was a greater percentage of people in one cohort or not. There are plenty of studies that suggest people from lower socio-economic groups have lower life expectancy and as a result suffer restricted restricted food choices which would include cheaper higher sugar products and at the other end high quantities of low fat and protein sources.
They only measured people at the start and after 6 years of a 25 year study. It beggars belief that they assume that peoples eating patterns did not change between 51 and 89 years of age (based on the starting sample being aged between 45 and 64).
This phrase is included in the report: Alternatively, increased consumption of plant-based protein and fat instead of carbohydrate was assocaited with a significant decrease in all-casue mortality. It might be easy to blame the press for the headline of low carb diets decreasing mortality, however, it is hardly prominent in this report. We eat, if we are doing it properly a low carb high QUALITY fat diet. The report says that their funders had no input into the report but I am yet to find out who the funders where. It may be there somewhere but,if so, it is well hidden. Sometime ago I wrote an essay on the WHO in 1998 reducing the BMI of men from 27.8 and 27.3 in women to 25. An estimated 30 million Americans woke up overweight. The WHO report was part fund by leading pharmaceutical companies. I wonder what happened to drug sales related to overweight people?
What is best, someone 120Kg on a 'normal' diet or someone 80Kg on a low carb diet. I know the answer is that someone 80Kg on a normal diet but I have plenty of overweight friends who for some reason do not find that they are able to lose weight with 'normal' diets. I am keeping an open mind. It may be that I would live another 4 years on a 'normal' diet and it may be that I do it with one leg, blind, after taking debilitating drugs and injecting insulin for the next however many years.
Anway I like this low crab diet. I never really like seafood anyway.
Oh! carbs??.... ****** that.