• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Low Carb Diets Dangerous

My take on the actual study not the press “summaries “ is that though it definitely has limitations it’s enough to make me cautious of animal fats and look more for plant based ones. Also our specific population-diabetic- may have different mortality risks than “all populations” as studied ( in fact I think such pre existing conditions were excluded from many studies examined). So whilst Mr or mrs average health is better on moderate carb diabetes considered I’ll stick to low carb for now but continue to limit bacon and other processed meats as they have higher cancer causation risks too
 
[QUOTE="How come they didn't consider caloric intake extreme until it went over 4200 cals per day for men.[/QUOTE]

Because it is a US study.
 
The problem with the study is they apparently didn't include anyone eating a real "Low Carb" diet the lowest group was consuming an average of 37% of calories from carbs. I doubt anyone following a low carb way of eating would be anywhere close to that and ketogenic eaters below 5% so it's pretty meaningless.
 
The study itself and the statistics are valid but for the specific target question concerning LCHF dieting "to lose weight" i.e. as dietary modification for that specific purpose.
As for most of us here modifying carb intake so our damaged insulin system can cope is the Primary driver and losing weight is an added Secondary target.
As ever the press manipulate the information to provide the Headline in the most newsworthy fashion.
The wording of the study is unfortunate in allowing that interpretation.
I shall continue LCHF until my T2 is controlled and then gradually 'test' my system by gently increasing carbs to a point of balance.
 
Well that's it then back to the carbs and stop this silly "LCHF" That has seen me loose almost 5 stone. 10 inches off my waist. Reduced my |HbA1c to 41, (so diabetes in remission) from 82. Bloods down from 16.6 to 4.7 average over 30 days. Off 1 of blood pressure tablets. Off all diabetes tablets (only taking a couple of Metformin to help reduce fatty liver) All in 4 months!!! So its down to the pub 10 pints of beer, fish and chips, more beer and a kebab on way home
 
Last edited:
The Twitterati are all over it, of course. It's based on food frequency questionnaires, which in themselves have been torn to shreds by many people over many years. Plus the old "healthy people" confoundeer which is very difficult to measure. A load of old codswallop methinks.
 
The thing they are saying which interests me is that low carb with high % of protein consumption being from animal based sources has worse outcomes (in terms of all cause mortality) than low carb with high % of protein consumption being from non animal based sources.
 
The Twitterati are all over it, of course. It's based on food frequency questionnaires, which in themselves have been torn to shreds by many people over many years. Plus the old "healthy people" confounder which is very difficult to account for. A load of old codswallop methinks.
 
britishpub said:
Basically

But it appears to be that if you get 50-55% of your calories from Carbohydrates you will live for a long time, any more or any less and you had better start making “arrangements”
Click to expand...
Well in that case...if I don't post tomorrow you will know what's happened.
 
gettingamoveon said:
Right, I'm going to have pasta for dinner and ask my doctor to start me on medication.
Click to expand...
From what I read, the study referred to the keto diet, which uses virtually no carbs, and lumps fibre in with them. Obviously if you cut out fibre you get problems. Also if you cut out all fruit and veg, you cut out a lot of essential nutrients. As someone who got her diabetes under control using the low carb diet, I can well understand, and feel the anger and frustration of everyone here who reads this article.
 
Well my 25 days on keto have been wonderful. My veggies provide plenty of fibre. What 'they' don't mention is that cutting out higher carb fruit reduces the problem of fatty liver.
 

So you're not long for this world then, @Terrytiddy . My condolences in advance to your family and friends!!!
Sally
 
Interesting too that it came from the Harvard Medical Group - didn't they get a bit of a bashing at the Swiss Re conference for exactly this type of study?

I think the empire is getting very nervous about low carb. I think we're starting to see the kind of stuff that Dr Jay Wortman spoke about in his talk about how the empire strikes back:

 
I see problems. Setting criteria which does not reflect people's general view of their own diet i.e I class my diet as LCHF but a particular statitian classes it as Keto because he/she has been given parameters set by a boffin. Another, probably more important, problem is with observational studies being couched in terms of being causational. So using the A+B=C therefore A causes C model. And then bring in the dogma that is the sat fat diet heart myth and you have people publishing this tripe which isn't worth the screen space it takes up.
 
Our friend Des would have a field day. For the interest of members, see John Ionnides segment at Swiss Re, too.
 
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.
 
No, you are thinking of the mice study where they were fed on vegetable fats which they alleged was a ketogenic diet. In fact of course feeding the mice on a vegetable fat diet would be far closer to a vegan way of eating than keto. Last time I looked I wasn't a mouse either.. It does get very confusing when so much bad science is published at the same time. Still I guess it keeps the debunkers in gainful employment. I just wish these studies would get some kind of "b****hit" rating so we can tell if there is any point in reading them (or the newspaper reports written off the back of them).
For your info a ketogenic diet does not cut all fruit and veg just most fruit and starchy veg. There are a lot of greens consumed and some berries.
Fibre it seems is not so essential as we once thought although the jury seems to be out at the moment. Carnivore diets, which I think is what you are confusing with keto, indeed do cut out all fruit and veg but so far I haven't heard of anyone dropping dead from them either. So those essential nutrients from fruit and veg may not be quite so essential as we once thought.
 
Last edited:
I’ve just read the study (long journey in the passenger seat). It is quite interesting. Always worth reading the actual findings.
The last line is
“when restricting carbohydrate intake, replacement of carbohydrates with predominantly plant-based fats and proteins could be considered as a long-term approach to promote healthy ageing.”
Very different to the BBC headline.
 
That was a good idea, discussing it on a thread originally started 18 months ago
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…