Here is the link to the recent Low carb vs. Low fat vs. Mediterranean diet study recently published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
One of the dopiest things they did in this study was increase the low carb group from 20 grams to up to 120grams after the initial 2 months of a 2 year study. So after 2 months the low carb group wasn't necessarily low carb diet anymore.
They also urged the low carb group to get their protein sources from vegetable based sources as if low carbers would ever do such a vile thing.
Seems like the researchers wanted the low carb group to fail wouldn't you say?
You can look over the entire study yourself later but here are the final results of the parameters they tested. Take a look at how powerful the low carb diet fared and how as carbs rose after the 2 month period many of the parameters got worse. If it's too hard to read go here.
Only in the levels of HOMA-1R did the Mediterranean diet do better. HOMA-1R is a way to measure insulin resistance. I can't say much more about it as I am not an expert in this but suffice it to say you want it to go down from baseline.
My guess is that if the low carb group kept their carbs to 20 grams or a touch more they would have experienced a better lowering in this as well as other parameters - closer to the Mediterranean diet, not to mention if their source of protein was actually meat and not tofu or rice and beans. (I wonder how they did and and kept carbs low enough?)
But the press and the researchers of this st did not report this study properly. They'd have you believe that all 3 diets work just as well saying it is personal preference. Compared to the others, the low fat diet rots. And eating a low fat diet rots worse.
Dean Ornish and others of his ilk cried afoul. They said that a real low fat diet has only 10% of calories coming from fat. But when the Ornish diet was compared to a low carb diet in the Atkins vs. LEARN vs. Ornish vs. Zone study, the low fat Ornish diet got its butt kicked. Here was the conclusion of the study:
to follow the Atkins diet, which had the lowest carbohydrate intake, lost more weight
and experienced more favorable overall metabolic effects at 12 months than women
assigned to follow the Zone, Ornish, or LEARN diets. While questions remain about
long-term effects and mechanisms, a low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat diet
may be considered a feasible alternative recommendation for weight loss."
When will the low fatters learn? When will the NIH learn? When will the AMA learn? When will the AHA, the ADA, the NIRM learn?
