Study challenges long-held science on low-fat diets

A new study challenges the commonly held assumptions about health and diet that have dominated the medical professional for the past several decades.

The New York Times reports the study has shown diets that are low in carbohydrates and high in fat allow people to lose more body fat. The diets also lower people's risk of developing heart and cardiovascular diseases than people who adhere to the more traditional low-fat diet that has long been the staple of medical and governmental guidelines on health and nutrition.

The study was conducted by a group of scientists from Johns Hopkins, Tulane, and the Kaiser Permanente Southern California with financing from the National Institutes of Health. It appeared in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The Times says the study was based on observations of a group of 150 ethnically diverse participants of both sexes. They were put on diets for one year that limited how many fats or carbohydrates they could eat, but not their general calorie count.

By the end of the year-long period, the group that ate a diet low in carbohydrates had lost eight pounds more than their counterparts who had adhered to a low-fat diet. The low-carbohydrate diet group also exhibited gains in their lean muscle mass, despite the fact that neither group had changed their physical activity levels much.

The low-fat diet group also lost weight, but interestingly, that weight constituted a higher level of muscle mass compared to the low carbohydrate group.

One of the more intriguing findings, and the one that most challenges accepted medical belief, is the fact that the low-carbohydrate group saw their scores on a test of their likelihood to have a heart attack in the next ten years drop, according to the Times. That test result is the Framingham risk score.