Newcastle Diet is Low Carb

ianf0ster said:

I've had some in the 'blue forum' saying bad things about Low Carb. Mostly from those who advocate the 'Newcastle Diet' as you would expect. But while we know that Low Carb doesn't have to be calorie restricted in any way for it to reduce BG (and weight in the majority of cases), the 'Newcastle Diet is not only calorie restricted (800 Calories) but it is also Low Carb!
It is <75gms carbs from the meal substitute shakes plus however many carbs from thee additional 200 cal worth of leafy green veg - so even if all the calories in the additional food were from carbs, the total carbs would still be under what the Low Carb community consider to be Low Carb ( <130gms). And they have the gall to claim that Low Carb is extreme!

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Mine wasn't. I was eating 55% of my cals from carbs. 1000 to 1200 cals. I reversed my T2 I believe. My diet is still 55% (at least) carbs, HBa1C 39. The shakes were used for the trial for consistency, but you can use ANY low cal diet you choose, including low carb if you like that, as long as you keep the calories low and lose around 15% of your weight.

Tannith said:

Mine wasn't. I was eating 55% of my cals from carbs. 1000 to 1200 cals. I reversed my T2 I believe. My diet is still 55% (at least) carbs, HBa1C 39. The shakes were used for the trial for consistency, but you can use ANY low cal diet you choose, including low carb if you like that, as long as you keep the calories low and lose around 15% of your weight.

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Were you on the Newcastle diet, including the shakes, or not? This thread is discussing the carbs in the Newcastle diet - 2 shakes a day and 800 calories total.

It is a question of semantics. When Prof Taylor started on the research, it was funded by DUK and some NHS money. Its aim was to see if s diet could be used to emulate the effect of bariatric surgery, which by inference is a low-calorie diet. This meant that for large-scale rollout it had to be acceptable to the NHS nutritionists and their regulators. Low Cal shakes as used in the Cambridge Diet plan are an accepted diet plan by these authorities, and as has been pointed out, made the study more controllable. The Cambridge Plan was already being offered on scrip by the NHS for the treatment of obesity, so it was already approved.

These bodies accept Low Cal but believe that Low Carb is hazardous to human nutrition, and so any mention of Low Carb or even carb content would kill the future prospects for mass rollout and NHS acceptance./recommendation. It is also why the original study was time-limited to avoid being accused of being a starvation diet. since this is what the Cambridge Plan used and again had been accepted by nutritionists.
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So it was a political decision to ensure continued funding and least resistance. It made it marketable.

It must be remembered that ND was originally only aimed at treating obesity, and the diabetes results are a bonus that we can benefit from, but we are not the prime target audience. Bariatric surgery had been noted for leading to T2D remission in some cases, so these parameter were measured during the initial study. But the remission seen following surgery is short lived and not permanent, and we see this uptock in the ND results too. But the diet version is repeatable, the surgery is not so the diet offers a means of control if one accepts revolving doors and yo-yo's.

lucylocket61 said:

Were you on the Newcastle diet, including the shakes, or not? This thread is discussing the carbs in the Newcastle diet - 2 shakes a day and 800 calories total.

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The principle of the ND is reduction in the pancreatic fat achieved by a very low calorie diet. ANY vlcal diet. You may be confused by the fact that the actual trial was done using shakes to ensure consistency among the participants so as to provide accurate measures of metabolic changes.
In the big wide world any diet that reduces pancreatic fat by calorie reduction will do, as Prof Taylor himself has repeatedly said. There is NO CARBS REQUIREMENT WHATSOEVER specified in the ND It is entirely about calories. You can get them or cut them out from any macronutrient you choose. There is now even a company that does vlc food boxes to support people doing the pancreatic fat reduction diet often dubbed the ND as it originated in Newcastle University which had the first scanner capable of measuring pancreatic fat. Only a few privileged trial participants got to use the expensive scanner. We lesser mortals just reduced our pancreatic fat with low calorie diets. We don't have scans to prove it, just normal BG readings etc.

ianf0ster said:

Oh, so you are a Newcastle Diet fan and so far as you're concerned it is is any low calorie diet is it?
Perhaps if we do a similar loosening on what is considered low calorie then I have done a 'Newcastle Diet' even though I was consuming north of 2000 calories per day since I too lost around 15% of my diagnosis weight.

I suppose you also believe that even Prof Roy Taylor's Newcastle Diet isn't really a 'Newcastle Diet' if the dieter puts the weight back on again? Because it's only a 'diet' if it 'works' - right?

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Did your weight loss bring your blood sugars into control? Did you put the weight back on and again how did it affect your condition? Prof Taylor is becoming fixated on weight loss being the prime mover so any diet giving success in the bulk reduction stakes is viable. In which case, why did the Cambridge plan NOT claim this many years ago? I see they do use the association with ND and their shakes (as 'proven' by DIRECT) in their current claims for diabetes reversal, which I suppose is valid since it was their shakes being used.

Tannith said:

The principle of the ND is reduction in the pancreatic fat achieved by a very low calorie diet. ANY vlcal diet. You may be confused by the fact that the actual trial was done using shakes to ensure consistency among the participants so as to provide accurate measures of metabolic changes.
In the big wide world any diet that reduces pancreatic fat by calorie reduction will do, as Prof Taylor himself has repeatedly said. There is NO CARBS REQUIREMENT WHATSOEVER specified in the ND It is entirely about calories. You can get them or cut them our from any macronutrient you choose. There is now even a company that does vlc food boxes to support people doing the pancreatic fat reduction diet often dubbed the ND as it originated in Newcastle University which had the first scanner capable of measuring pancreatic fat. Only a few privileged trial participants got to use the expensive scanner. We lesser mortals just reduced our pancreatic fat with low calorie diets. We don't have scans to prove it, just normal BG readings etc.

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someone is confused here - and it isnt me. Newcastle Diet is 800 cals a day. Were you doing the Newcastle Diet we are discussing here? This thread is not about low calorie diets en masse. Its about a specific diet, called The Newcastle Diet, consisting of 2 shakes and 800 cals total a day.

lucylocket61 said:

someone is confused here - and it isnt me. Newcastle Diet is 800 cals a day. Were you doing the Newcastle Diet we are discussing here? This thread is not about low calorie diets en masse. Its about a specific diet, called The Newcastle Diet, consisting of 2 shakes and 800 cals total a day.

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So ND is not defined as shakes any more, but as 800 cal per day now. That's better.

Oldvatr said:

Did your weight loss bring your blood sugars into control? Did you put the weight back on and again how did it affect your condition? Prof Taylor is becoming fixated on weight loss being the prime mover so any diet giving success in the bulk reduction stakes is viable. In which case, why did the Cambridge plan NOT claim this many years ago? I see they do use the association with ND and their shakes (as 'proven' by DIRECT) in their current claims for diabetes reversal, which I suppose is valid since it was their shakes being used.

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Yes, my weight loss brought my BGs back to normal. No, I didn't put the weight back on (this time), in fact it has decreased further since I got to the point around Easter this year where my BG was normal. I should mention however that I did something similar to ND which I always described as the "wimp's version of ND" both the times I did what I loosely call "ND". The first time I did it I put some of the weight back on after around 3 years, and my BG went up though not dramatically. So I did it again - also my "wimp's version" that is about 1000 to 1200 cal starting late 2020 - just under a year ago and my weight/BG are normal and weight less than it was last Easter. Although I didn't do a drastically low cal diet either time, it still worked so I think that speaks well for the low cal weight loss diet to lose pancreatic fat. I used normal food as well, so it doesn't have to be hard. And for me it worked despite the fact that I did a toned down version of it with considerably more calories than Prof Taylor's subjects.

Tannith said:

And for me it worked despite the fact that I did a toned down version of it with considerably more calories than Prof Taylor's subjects.

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Whether the diet you chose to do worked for you is not the point.

This discussion is about the carbohydrate content of an 800cal diet used and promoted by professor Taylor. Period.

You have made it clear that you have not done the diet under discussion, so your results are irrelevant to this thread.

Tannith said:

So ND is not defined as shakes any more, but as 800 cal per day now. That's better.

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Not for the purposes of this thread, which specifically mention the shakes, regardless of how the components of the Newcastle diet may or may not be defined by others.

The first and second ND trials used Optifast shakes and the second one was the one that did the MRI work. The Optifast website at the time carried a warning that a few participants doing the 800 cal diet might experience nutritional ketosis and provided advice on how to deal with it if it does happen. So their 800 cal diet was supposed to run just above the threshold for ketosis, apparently. Roy Taylor took their diet and added 200 cal of carbs on top to ensure that ketosis was not part of his diet plan.

It was very important as I said above for this diet plan to operate without any mention of carbs or ketosis since that would have been the death knell to further funding and would invalidate the research in the eyes of most NHS licenced practitioners. Ketosis was considered unsafe at that time.

The other point to make is that this diet being ultra low cal inevitably requires low fat intake, which is also necessary to be considered. It is not just calorie reduction, but also lipid removal, and so it is not just any old diet. The low fat component will ensure that any fat-burning is not from diet supplied lipids, and so must come from the adipose sources.

Tannith said:

Yes, my weight loss brought my BGs back to normal. No, I didn't put the weight back on (this time), in fact it has decreased further since I got to the point around Easter this year where my BG was normal. I should mention however that I did something similar to ND which I always described as the "wimp's version of ND" both the times I did what I loosely call "ND". The first time I did it I put some of the weight back on after around 3 years, and my BG went up though not dramatically. So I did it again - also my "wimp's version" that is about 1000 to 1200 cal starting late 2020 - just under a year ago and my weight/BG are normal and weight less than it was last Easter. Although I didn't do a drastically low cal diet either time, it still worked so I think that speaks well for the low cal weight loss diet to lose pancreatic fat. I used normal food as well, so it doesn't have to be hard. And for me it worked despite the fact that I did a toned down version of it with considerably more calories than Prof Taylor's subjects.

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I was actually replying to @ianf0ster post

Oldvatr said:

It must be remembered that ND was originally only aimed at treating obesity, and the diabetes results are a bonus that we can benefit from, but we are not the prime target audience.

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I don't think that is correct - the primary aim was to try and improve blood glucose in people with type 2 diabetes. This is a quote from a BBC interview with Prof Tayloe:-

ianf0ster said:

'Newcastle Diet is not only calorie restricted (800 Calories) but it is also Low Carb!

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It rather depends how you define 'low carb'. You are looking at it from the point of view of g of carbohydrate consumed per day which will be low. A more usual way to look at it would be to calculate the percentage of calories that come from carbohydrates. 125 g of carbohydrate would supply 500 Calories which would be 62.5% of daily calories which is not low carb.

In any case, the diets differ in that ND low-calorie shake phase is for a relatively short period of time (8 weeks) whereas low carb is for life. It might be better to compare low carb to the maintenance phase of the diet plan which advises (amongst other things):-

• Limit processed carbohydrate foods like biscuits, crisps, cakes, pastries, sweets and chocolate
• • Avoid fruit juice, smoothies and sugary drinks
• Choose wholegrain and slow release starchy carbohydrates at meals. Limit the portion size to no more than ¼ of a 10” plate – they are not essential.
• Choose fruits such as berries, a slice of melon, an apple, a small orange. Have more veg than fruit each day, and limit tropical fruits which are higher in sugar
  
• https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwncla.../files/201809 Sample Recipes & meal plans.pdf

Low carb is defined by most UK sources as 130g a day or fewer.

Dark Horse said:

It rather depends how you define 'low carb'. You are looking at it from the point of view of g of carbohydrate consumed per day which will be low. A more usual way to look at it would be to calculate the percentage of calories that come from carbohydrates. 125 g of carbohydrate would supply 500 Calories which would be 62.5% of daily calories which is not low carb.

In any case, the diets differ in that ND low-calorie shake phase is for a relatively short period of time (8 weeks) whereas low carb is for life. It might be better to compare low carb to the maintenance phase of the diet plan which advises (amongst other things):-

• Limit processed carbohydrate foods like biscuits, crisps, cakes, pastries, sweets and chocolate
• • Avoid fruit juice, smoothies and sugary drinks
• Choose wholegrain and slow release starchy carbohydrates at meals. Limit the portion size to no more than ¼ of a 10” plate – they are not essential.
• Choose fruits such as berries, a slice of melon, an apple, a small orange. Have more veg than fruit each day, and limit tropical fruits which are higher in sugar
  
• https://www.ncl.ac.uk/media/wwwnclacuk/newcastlemagneticresonancecentre/files/201809 Sample Recipes & meal plans.pdf

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However, the title of this thread is concerning the Newcastle diet and carbs. Not low carb diets in general.

Hey everyone,

Back on topic or thread bans, deletions and endorsments ensue for those taking it on a skew...

Thanks in advance.. On behalf of the mod team.

ianf0ster said:

plus however many carbs from thee additional 200 cal worth of leafy green veg

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Can I just double check this? 100g of leafy greens is around 30 cals. 200 cals is a huge amount of green veg to eat a day. The diet mentions 250g of non starchy veg, which is around 80 cals max and 8g of carbs. So a total of around 80-85 carbs daily.