Diet Better less sugar instead of less fat

Low-carbohydrate diets are significantly better for weight loss than carbohydrate-rich diets

09/08/2014

Which diet can best help you lose excess pounds? This question has occupied doctors, researchers and nutrition experts alike for decades. According to a recent study, the low carbohydrate diet is the most effective.

In France, people like to eat fat cheese, fat pies and milk with a very high fat content. Nevertheless, the French suffer less often in comparison to obesity. In contrast, however, the waist circumference in the United States has been increasing dramatically for decades. And that happens anyway, even though nutrition experts in America advise to eat as little fat as possible. Still, US citizens seem to get fatter and fatter, so they take less fat. Scientists know the answer: „In the US, consumers are trying to make up for the lack of fat with simple carbohydrates. These simple sugars create even more hip gold than saturated fatty acids.“ However, this answer is not without controversy and doctors still recommend today to take less fat instead of less carbohydrates.

However, a randomized research study now made a science of it and found that low-carbohydrate diets are significantly better at losing weight than carbohydrate-rich diets.

A team around Dr. Lydia Bazzano of Tulane University in New Orleans won 148 men and women for the study. All of them suffered from overweight or obesity, but not from cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The participants were on average less than 50 years old at the beginning of the study, approximately 100 kilograms and had a Body Mass Index (BMI) of just over 35. Subjects were randomly split evenly into two groups. In one, participants were encouraged to eat no more than 40 grams of digestible carbs per day, with no restriction on indigestible fiber. In the other groups, subjects should only consume up to 30 percent of their daily calories in the form of fat.

Low-Carp showed better effects
About 80 percent of the participants kept the diet through to the end. Even if no upper calorie limit was set, the energy intake in both diets was similarly low at around 1,400 kilocalories per day. However, the reduction of carbohydrates in weight led to significantly better results.

The participants from the low-carb group had on average lost 3.5 kilograms more than those in the low-fat group after their 12 months of study, even though they did not comply with their requirements. The subjects who were supposed to limit the fat in the diet met the requirements fully, but the participants who should reduce the carbohydrates consumed instead of the 40 given on average about 90 grams of digestible carbohydrates per day. In the low-carb group, participants lost an average of 5.3 kilograms after one year, but in the low-fat group, they were only 1.8 kilograms lighter.

Blood lipid levels, total cholesterol-to-HDL cholesterol ratios, and body fat were better off in carbohydrate-free participants. Although the results of the current study are clear, it should not be overlooked that only a relatively small number of participants were involved and that other studies yielded partly opposite results. In addition, the results may also be slightly biased, as the participants were urged by the researchers not to move more in the study months than in the previous period. Bazzano says: „A low-carbohydrate diet is preferable to a low-fat diet, both in terms of slimming success and cardiovascular risk.“A view that others may disagree with. (sb, ad)

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