High on fat, low on evidence: the problem with the keto diet

[britishpub]

Article in the Grauniad today....

The ultra-low-carb ketogenic diet – which forces the body to burn fat – flies in the face of conventional nutritional advice. It is hugely popular, but is it healthy or sustainable?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ow-on-evidence-the-problem-with-the-keto-diet

Actually not as negative on the subject of Keto as one might expect, although it does appear to be more of a plug for a book released on 10th January "Just Eat It: How Intuitive Eating Can Help You Get Your **** Together Around Food" which promotes an approach called intuitive eating: learning to eat mainly in response to physiological hunger and satiety cues.

Strangely enough Keto/Low Carb does just that for me, and I'm sure it does for most of us.

 

[lucylocket61]

I went, I saw, I commented : )

 

[Member496333]

Thanks. I’ve been keeping an eye out for the next sponsored Guardian article. I guess grain sales are really suffering now.

 

[bulkbiker]

Thanks. I’ve been keeping an eye out for the next sponsored Guardian article. I guess grain sales are really suffering now.

Bit like when Atkins first started and the NY bagel shops started to close...

 

[Brunneria]

Well, if I ate intuitively, I would eat 90% dark chocolate and 10% Kettles Crisps...

 

[Oldvatr]

Surprisingly balanced article for the main stream press. Here on the forum we often forget that this WOE is often just a weightloss diet to the public. We here in the forum that are also in the UK benefit from hindsight by being able to eat to meter, and get annual blood tests and checkups that inform us as to how our diet is affecting us in a way that Joe Public is missing. out, So I am not surprised that it is regarded as a fad diet and posibly dangerous long term since there is little in the way of long term studies and reports to back it up. We here use metastudies to justify certain aspects of the diet, and anecdotal evidence which are not gold plated RCT studies that the NHS is used to using, The diet is effectively in its infancy even though Banting was centuries ago it is only since Atkins that the keto WOE became acceptable(?) in the eyes of the general public, and thus paved the way for LCHF.

The other problem I see is that we are strongly influenced by Guru's and other postulates, be it Fung, Greger, Maholtra, etc and this is a weakness I perceive that strengthens the critics. Without the hard evidence behind it, then it remains anecdotal.

I was thinking that the author citing that the 44% increase in LDL was bad because that is the 'bad' cholesteol was showing her return to formal training in her profession, but then again, the evidence that LDL is no longer a good marker for CVD is still weak and again is not underpinned fully by science. There are some nice videos of guru's explaining that it really is sLDL that is the bad boy, and that this is what we measure as 'trigs' in the cholesterol panel, but this is not yet proven to be linked to plaque formation, so is a theory not a fact.

 

[NicoleC1971]

Quite clever in that it appears reasonable at first until you get to the fact that the author is promoting her own book. So its an 'authorital' based on a re hash of the 'everything in moderation' idea commonly spouted by those who don't have metabolic disease and may thus benefit from some form of low carb diet (there is a spectrum).

 

[Oldvatr]

Quite clever in that it appears reasonable at first until you get to the fact that the author is promoting her own book. So its an 'authorital' based on a re hash of the 'everything in moderation' idea commonly spouted by those who don't have metabolic disease and may thus benefit from some form of low carb diet (there is a spectrum).

The only place I get a problem with moderation is here on this website.........

 

[pdmjoker]

I am not surprised that it is regarded as a fad diet and posibly dangerous long term since there is little in the way of long term studies and reports to back it up.

Have you seen this book and the length of low carb research by the authors?

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Art-Scie...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546995694&sr=1-1

 

[Ponchu]

Well...you might try this new exciting and hopeful way of eating that...surprise, surprise, the author’s article describes is up fir sale!

The Guardian let her shill for her own book while posing as a health interest journalism article.

 

[Ponchu]

Well, if I ate intuitively, I would eat 90% dark chocolate and 10% Kettles Crisps...

I am eating intuitively, going back to the innocence of childhood.

Oreo cookies and milk.

**** the blood sugars, full speed ahead to my inner child!

Edited for language by mod

 

[Oldvatr]

Have you seen this book and the length of low carb research by the authors?

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Art-Scie...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546995694&sr=1-1

There is a great deal of difference between someone writing a book and an RCT independant study. I am aware of these authors, and I personally follow this path, but it is not Proof in the accepted sense. There are some research projects running that support this work but these are generally small scale, and not long term. We have some meta studies that also seem to confirm the findings, but these are subject to misinterpretation since the conditions of the reports they are analysing are not controlled in the same way that an RCT trial should be, and again, it is not necessarily verified by independant scrutiny. So the evidence is moving in the right direction, but there is not yet sufficient body of evidence to confirm the LC diets as being safe and effective. The closest we have is the Harvard Nurses Study and that has so far not yielded a verdict om LC dieting. However, the AHA have recently moved towards accepting LC as a possible WOE and they base their recommendtions on the Harvard study..

 

[pdmjoker]

There is a great deal of difference between someone writing a book and an RCT independant study. I am aware of these authors, and I personally follow this path, but it is not Proof in the accepted sense. There are some research projects running that support this work but these are generally small scale, and not long term. We have some meta studies that also seem to confirm the findings, but these are subject to misinterpretation since the conditions of the reports they are analysing are not controlled in the same way that an RCT trial should be, and again, it is not necessarily verified by independant scrutiny. So the evidence is moving in the right direction, but there is not yet sufficient body of evidence to confirm the LC diets as being safe and effective. The closest we have is the Harvard Nurses Study and that has so far not yielded a verdict om LC dieting. However, the AHA have recently moved towards accepting LC as a possible WOE and they base their recommendtions on the Harvard study..

I'm with you now - thank you! Their photo here unfortunately makes them look creepy:
https://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/

 

[Oldvatr]

I'm with you now - thank you! Their photo here unfortunately makes them look creepy:
https://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/

Thankfully I do not give a hoot what they look like. It is what they say that is important. Also what they do not say in some cases can be enlightening. They have certainly changed my life for the better, But it remains that LC has a way to go before it is accepted by the mainstream as a viable and safe diet.

 

[ghost_whistler]

Dreadful 'article'. The Guardian is on a pro-vegan mission for sure