Low-fat diet benefits body more than low-carb diet

Prof Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford, said: “The investigators rightly conclude that the best diet for weight loss is the diet you can stick to”. The team basically wanted to find out how an obese body adapted to the cutting of fat from a diet versus the cutting of carbohydrates.

Latest study suggests that low-carb diets may not be as good as we once thought they were, with results showing that a low-fat diet may actually be better for long-term weight loss.

A recent study by the NIH indicates that low-fat diets are more effective in losing weight than low-carb diets. During the second period the conditions were reversed. Researchers analyzed the chemical composition of the participants, and came to the conclusion that eliminating fats had the greatest impact on weight loss.

At the end of the two dieting periods, the mathematical model proved to be correct. Carb restriction lowered production of the fat-regulating hormone insulin and increased fat burning as expected, whereas fat restriction had no observed changes in insulin production or fat burning. The test group completed two, two week trials; one week they ate a low-carb diet and the following seven days they consumed less fat. “Our results showed that, actually, not all calories are created equal when it comes to body fat loss, but over the long term, it’s pretty close”. When simulating what might happen over longer periods, the model predicted relatively small differences in body fat loss with widely varying ratios of carbs to fat. This study found that the same process occurs at a greater rate when fats are cut off from diet. The research is limited by its sample size; only 19 people could be enrolled due to the expense of such research and the restrictiveness of the carefully controlled protocol.

“We are trying to do very careful studies in humans to better understand the underlying physiology that will one day be able to help generate better recommendations about day-to-day dieting”, Hall says. “He is now analysing brain scans of the participants to see how the diets affect how rewarding food is”. They added: “The most important message for now is probably that some carbohydrates are all right, especially the healthy whole-grain low-glycaemic-index variety”. He hopes these results might inform why people respond differently to different diets.