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Medicine Science

Low-Carb Diets Could Shorten Life, Study Suggests (bbc.com) 170

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: In the study, published in The Lancet Public Health, 15,400 people from the U.S. filled out questionnaires on the food and drink they consumed, along with portion sizes. From this, scientists estimated the proportion of calories they got from carbohydrates, fats, and protein. After following the group for an average of 25 years, researchers found that those who got 50-55% of their energy from carbohydrates (the moderate carb group) had a slightly lower risk of death compared with the low and high-carb groups. Researchers estimated that, from the age of 50, people in the moderate carb group were on average expected to live for another 33 years. This was: four years more than people who got 30% or less of their energy from carbs (extra-low-carb group); 2.3 years more than the 30%-40% (low-carb) group; and 1.1 years more than the 65% or more (high-carb) group.

The scientists then compared low-carb diets rich in animal proteins and fats with those that contained lots of plant-based protein and fat. They found that eating more beef, lamb, pork, chicken and cheese in place of carbs was linked with a slightly increased risk of death. But replacing carbohydrates with more plant-based proteins and fats, such as legumes and nuts, was actually found to slightly reduce the risk of mortality.

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Low-Carb Diets Could Shorten Life, Study Suggests

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  • by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @10:37PM (#57148150) Homepage

    Almost everyone I know who eats low carb does so for a reason. They are fat, prone to be fat, diabetic, celiacs, or some other health problem that made them switch to low carb in the first place. Otherwise healthy people generally don't choose low carb without a health problem first.

    • Almost everyone I know who eats low carb does so for a reason. They are fat, prone to be fat, diabetic, celiacs, or some other health problem that made them switch to low carb in the first place. Otherwise healthy people generally don't choose low carb without a health problem first.

      Exactly.

    • by KingTank ( 631646 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:55PM (#57148358)
      Yeah, it says something like that in the study. "Participants who consumed a relatively low percentage of total energy from carbohydrates (ie, participants in the lowest quantiles) were more likely to be young, male, a self-reported race other than black, college graduates, have high body-mass index, exercise less during leisure time, have high household income, smoke cigarettes, and have diabetes." LOL But it's still misleading of course, because most people won't bother to actually read it.
      • by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @12:56AM (#57148468)
        Surprised?
        According to findings [gizmodo.com] on platforms like Reddit a lot of internet users will not read the article before forming an opinion on the piece. It's likely that they read headlines and subhead. Maybe they will read a summary if they feel like it. But from personal experience of the comment sections on major German newspaper that rarely happens as far as online platforms go. Which leads me to believe that this is a fairly common phenomenon among various cultures.

        Of course it's a nice thing to know for online media whose revenue relies on generating clicks for their article. If all they do is to pick a catchy headline and perhaps write summery in a similar fashion, it's already enough to draw a significant amount of attention from their audience. On top of that the same phenomenon as illustrated above probably also applies to a significant portion ofjournalists, leading them to mostly only read press releases instead of working through the full papers.
        I'm not sure in which direction the causality goes here as in whether those who publish papers have found out what gets you more likely published, journalists have found out what makes the most money, or both. In anyway the result stays the same.
    • they actually didnt

      if you look at the data all the people eating low carb are massively at risk from dying earlier, in comparison, regardless of diet

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Yes. Of course they fucking did. RTFA:

      We analysed the covariates of age, sex, race (self-reported), study centre, education level (grade school, high school without diploma, high school graduate, vocational school, college graduate, graduate school or professional school), cigarette smoking status (current, former, never), physical activity level (sport and exercise activity and non-sport activity during leisure from Baecke questionnaire 17), total energy intake (kcal), ARIC test centre location, and diabe

    • >"Almost everyone I know who eats low carb does so for a reason. They are fat, prone to be fat, diabetic, celiacs, or some other health problem that made them switch to low carb in the first place. Otherwise healthy people generally don't choose low carb without a health problem first.""

      The main problem is obesity. It is far, far worse than WHAT people eat. And the cure is simple. Eat less. Low-carb is just essentially another fad deit like low-fat, low-sugar, low-salt, pills, high-fiber, all-fruit,

    • I am approaching my 6th year on a low-carb high-fat diet. I am 5'11" tall and I weighed 172 when I started. I hold steady right around 160 now, +-5 lbs. Went from 34" waist to 32", and am still there.

      I know plenty of people who chose a low-carb diet who were not overweight. I was in good shape (not my best) but saw significant improvements after only a month. Joint pain went away, my teeth are better, my cardio vascular health improved. I suspect these were due to things like lowering of inflammation d

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      Most of the people I know on low carbs live a very healthy lifestyle already and generally always have. The rest don't have the inclination to go to the effort of doing so. It's the old joke: you will live an extra year, but it is better than that, as it will feel like you've lived ten years longer.
  • Eat 50% carbs and get your protein & fat from nuts & beans. You will gain 1-4 years on your life... if you make it past 50.

    We couldn't add a sentence or two about their samples exercise level to get more concrete answers?

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      History of consumption counts more than what they allow. So what have you consumed from birth, what damage has been done during growth and now manifests with poor outcomes and a requirement for diet change.

      Diet change can mitigate further harm and to an extent repair harm already caused dependent age and duration or poor dietary choices. So you need family diet history and probably environmental exposure to pollution, in order to make a more valid analysis.

      Of course source of proteins and herbivorous diet

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Eat 50% carbs and get your protein & fat from nuts & beans.

      Hmm.. pretty much what I've been aiming for since a couple of years. Almost no sugar, and don't be afraid of fats! Just watch the kinds of fats & what other nutrients (protein, minerals, fibres etc) their sources come with. As the body adapts to pull calories from fats & high-fibre 'slow' carbs (vs. from sugar and low-fibre carbs found in many processed foods), blood sugar highs and lows tend to disappear. Making you loose those cravings for sugar rich, unhealthy in-between snacks.

      One thing the a

      • One thing the article fails to mention: animal fat tends to be high in saturated fats, which are considered not-so-healthy. Whereas plant based fats tend to be high in mono- or polyunsaturated fats, which are considered healthier than the saturated variety. This could explain some of the differences.

        I thought I'd been reading that saturated fats really aren't as bad for you as had been thought....??

        Have you seen any of that out there in the literature lately?

  • by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @10:56PM (#57148206)

    Butter is good. Low carb leaves a lot of parameter space for what are you replacing it with. At the end of the day you pick a caloric intake and you pick a method of filling it. Turning down the mid range doesn't say what you did with the treble, base and volume knobs.

    Here's the thing. If you lower your carbs and 2 years later your whole body still feels great then whatever you did probably was the right thing. I'm not saying eat what makes you happy. Because if you do that, and happy is pancakes, then 2 years from now you won't feel healthy or happy about how you feel when you aren't eating pancakes.. Unless maybe you are a kid.

    You body doesn't have sense on a meal by meal basis but it lets you know you are not eating well overall.

    SO no frigging way are the people on low carb diets long term and likeing how they feel doing damage.

    On the other hand low carb diets could be bad ideas if for example you stay on the atkins diet or something equivalently stupid. Atkins is better than being obese but once you shed that, get off it man!

    The thig about low carbs is that for some people it's incredibly easy. Once you stop using sugar you just lose the desire for it. it's not punishment. And that's the magic of low carbs. It's one of the few "diets" that doesn't lead to yo-yo. At least not for a subset fo people. It's sustainable.

    It isn't for every one. But for some folks it is an easy way to feel good over the long term. That can't be unhealthy.

    • Once you stop using sugar you just lose the desire for it. it's not punishment. And that's the magic of low carbs. It's one of the few "diets" that doesn't lead to yo-yo. At least not for a subset fo people. It's sustainable.

      It isn't for every one.

      This just reminds me of reading some "article" by someone several years ago about why low carb was bad and not good for weight loss. They literally did low carb for 3-4 weeks.... then got off it and admitted to eating an entire cake... THEN complained about gaining weight after that day. They said something about how it was so great that they lost 2-3lbs while doing the diet then how they gained 4lbs the day after they quit it and ate *A CAKE*.

  • Um (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jwymanm ( 627857 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:07PM (#57148234) Homepage
    Why do we keep covering these obvious causation vs correlation studies. Heck this one looks like it was crafted in reverse just to tarnish low carb diets. They get 2 minute blurbs on news stations and you never hear from them again. Ridiculous.
    • Re:Um (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheFakeTimCook ( 4641057 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:41PM (#57148326)

      Why do we keep covering these obvious causation vs correlation studies. Heck this one looks like it was crafted in reverse just to tarnish low carb diets. They get 2 minute blurbs on news stations and you never hear from them again. Ridiculous.

      Follow the Funding...

      • by pots ( 5047349 )
        Okay... that's not hard, they say right at the bottom of the paper that it was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. In other words, government grants.

        You all are dismissing survey results too quickly. A well-crafted survey can control for the kind of factors that people in this thread are just assuming the authors didn't consider, and randomized trials have their own drawbacks.Both methods are necessary to get the fullest picture of what works and what doesn't.
  • Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:14PM (#57148252) Journal

    If you cut all pasta, bread and cakes out of your diet, you won't actually die younger. You'll just wish you would.

  • http://bit.ly/2qCprNI [bit.ly]

    No desserts. No sweets. No potatoes. No rice. No bread. No pasta. âoeWhen I say âno,â(TM) I mean âno, or not much,â(TM)â she notes... Kenyon, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the UCSF, has been on her diet for two-and-a-half years. âoeI did it because we fed our worms glucose and it shortened their lifespan.â

  • by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Friday August 17, 2018 @11:22PM (#57148276)

    Many comments here about protein, and the sources of protein, yadda. For some bizarre reason scientists and the general public assume that low carb means high protein. IT DOESN'T. Every responsible low carb diet makes it perfectly clear that one should not eat much protein. For one thing, your body will use it to make carbohydrates. Why people choose to ignore this is baffling. More fat, less protein, much less carbohydrate is the formula. Is it that difficult to remember?

    And let's not fuss about 'good' fat vs 'bad' fat. There are two primary concerns: Trans fats are bad. The other is never mentioned- rancid fat. This is a problem due to the fad of switching from animal fats to vegetable fats that started around the'80s. The good thing about animal fat is you know when it is rancid- it stinks. But vegetable fat doesn't. You don't know that you are poisoning yourself with it. Buy the smaller container of vegetable oil (if you must use it; lard is acceptable) and put it in the refrigerator after you open the bottle. Throw it out if you have any doubt. Coconut and MCT oil seem pretty stable at room temp and they are very good fuel for athletes and diabetics and most people.

    • by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @01:06AM (#57148478) Journal

      The fad with saturated fats has really hurt the average health, because people started eating more carbs to make up for the missing calories. And as a result, there was an explosion of diabetes cases.

      As you say, when it comes to fats, the main thing you should look out for is whether they are trans-fats or not, and avoid trans-fats like the plague. But saturated fats have been proven to not be any worse for the cardiovascular system than non-saturated fats. Only this fact seems to have been suppressed in popular media.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @03:52AM (#57148786) Journal

      Every responsible low carb diet makes it perfectly clear that one should not eat much protein. For one thing, your body will use it to make carbohydrates.

      A bit. When there are insufficient carbs in your diet, some of the protein can be eventually converted to glucose, but not all amino acids can take that pathway. Either way your body pretty much only makes the glucose you need since it's a rather slow and inefficient process compared to direct ingestion of carbs.

    • You need the protein to get fuckin swole, dude!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Okay, I am going to disagree with your statement on vegetable oils and say that you do not know what you are talking about. Yes, they will eventually go rancid. However it takes a while--particularly if you take a little bit of care in how you store it (e.g., pantry or cabinet). And you can taste it when it goes rancid.

      I couldn't find an immediate great website, but here is a reference:
      https://www.canitgobad.net/can-vegetable-oil-go-bad/

      I'll leave it to you to find a more authoritative reference that backs

      • by Anonymous Coward

        "vegetable oil" is too general a term to say anything useful about.

        polyunsaturated fats go rancid very quickly because they are prone to oxidation.

        Flax seed oil for example can even spontaneously combust (google it) because it oxidizes so fast. This is why it should also be sold and kept refrigerated, and seeds should be ground and consumed immediately.

        canola oil, ie canadian rapeseed oil is highly processed and usually hydrogenated, ie with plenty of trans-fats. The fda banned rapeseed oil in the 1950's

    • by sad_ ( 7868 )

      Many comments here about protein, and the sources of protein, yadda. For some bizarre reason scientists and the general public assume that low carb means high protein. IT DOESN'T. Every responsible low carb diet makes it perfectly clear that one should not eat much protein. For one thing, your body will use it to make carbohydrates. Why people choose to ignore this is baffling.

      right!

      this is what i tell people who are all into the 'protein diet' craze. it's BS, your body works on carbs - your brain needs it to function, your muscles need it to perform. your body will try anything to get carbs from somewhere if it doesn't get it through normal channels (you eating). transforming fat or proteins, but in general getting it from proteins is bad.

      carbs are not evil, just some carbs are, just like fat isn't evil, just some fats are.

    • Generally, unsaturated fats go rancid more quickly than saturated fats.
  • by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @01:01AM (#57148474) Journal

    I've been diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago. I knew that lowering caloric intake can cure type 2 diabetes, but I am not fat, in fact, I am more on the skinny side, so I had few option of lowering my caloric intake much. However, I knew that carbs are associated with diabetes and started researching the issue more in depth. I decided to severely cut the amount of carbs I eat.

    It was difficult at first, but as time went on, I gradually found it easier and easier. I replaced it with vegetables everywhere I could, which turns out to be a lot of places.

    I am happy to announce that I have no symptoms or readings associated with diabetes anymore, and I do feel awesomely good. Whether this diet will shorten my life or not, I can't say (though I doubt it very much), but I really don't care. Quality of life matters more than length of life, and the quality of my life is so much higher than before the diet, I am glad to sacrifice a decade of shitty diabetic life for it.

    • A couple things.

      I was looking stuff up and found that studies on the effects are CONTRADICTING EACH OTHER.

      I would take the one that says that being on a ketogenic diet causes diabetes with a HUGE grain of salt - it's backwards of the others for instance.

      Also there's a huge difference between being low carb and out of ketogenesis and low carb IN ketogenesis.

      And there's a difference between relying on oils or fats or meat...

      The fact is that we don't really have good information on the effects of macronutrient

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The problem with ketogenic diet that no matter how much it improves certain health outcomes (cancer, neurological disorders, whatever) all of that pales in comparison to the leading killer ... heart disease. Cardiac arrest and it's influence on lifespan happen to be poorly captured in mouse models. Human epidemiology is always the final arbiter for long term health outcomes, but in this case there is little alternative.

        I think despite the particle size angle, the extra cholesterol needed to digest the fat i

  • There are so many possible explanations for this result, you can't draw these conclusions from this.
    E.g. people who eat ~50% carbs might be the normal ones, living a relaxed life, not having the need for any diets. People who make diets, such as low carbs, might be more fat. Also, replacing carbs with nuts is pretty expensive. These are people with money, it is no surprise they live longer.
  • ... the most deadly disease there is. There are no known cases of survival. Sometimes, regrettably it is associated with dementia and fear tho. I drink wine and beer, eat bread, noodles and meat too. Till some goodperson bans it or put under such prohibitive tax that nobody except the goodpeople can afford them I will continue doing so. Fuck goodpeople. When I was young I thought only evilpeople are bad for us. Not so now. Too many goodpeople telling me how evil I am because I live. My current answer to th
  • Those replacing carbs with steaks and cold cuts sure ruin the statistics.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This study (really a survey) defines a low-carb diet as between 30-40% of calories. And the average is about 38% for the observed low-carbers.

    That's lower carb, for sure, but it's not meaningfully low-carb. Ketosis (fat metabolism) doesn't begin until about 20% carbs (50-60g per day of carbs, as a rule of thumb).

    A few months ago another study, 'proving' that low-carb diets had no advantages, also gave a firm conclusion recommending a 'plant based diet' while talking up low-carbing's supposed health issues.

  • Lots of uncontrolled variables in this study. Contradicts many others
  • Glad to see they didn't just say "low carb = death do the opposite." I worried at first it was going to be an article saying they found low carb people dying younger so therefor eat a ton of carbs all the time.

    Instead it looks like they are actually saying low carb only shaved 2ish years off while high carb was actually the "true villain."

  • In this decreases lifespan, but mantains, or actually increases, the number of healthy years in that decreased lifespan, is actually a welcome development.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Eat more beans, it will save your life.

  • by Northdot ( 1585317 ) on Saturday August 18, 2018 @11:35AM (#57150110)

    The idea that you can extend the results of this study to the current definitions of "low carb" eating is bogus.

    In this study "low carb" was 38% of calories from carbs.. way higher than anything you would need to approach nutritional ketosis (the target of current low-carb eating). In fact the group identified as "low carb" were basically "shitty lifestyle", and in the words of the study: "were more likely to be young, male, a self-reported race other than black, college graduates, have high body-mass index, exercise less during leisure time, have high household income, smoke cigarettes, and have diabetes."

    So in fact the study showed something that is common sense.. people who don't care about their health fair worse than people who do.

  • There is no possibility of controlling for all the relevant variables.
    This conflates every kind of carbohydrate and fatty acid.
    There are so many other things I could point out but this is enough to prove the worthlessness of the study.

  • Nutritionists and health food nuts have been trying to "fix" what people eat for decades. The fix is always worse than the original problem if there really was any problem to begin with. And so what if you live to be 95? You'll most likely have some debilitating degenerative disease that makes daily life pretty miserable.

  • Most folks eating "low carb"... would consider 30% carbs to be obscenely high; ketosis probably doesn't work for most people even at 10%.

    Both the low carb folks and traditional dieticians would agree that fat is bad when you have enough carbs to trigger strong insulin responses. 30% carbs is going to trigger strong insulin responses, so both the low carb folks and the traditional dieticians could kinda look at this ahead of time and predict the outcome?

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