Low-Carb Diet Effective in Losing Weight and Cutting Heart Risks

A long term Harvard study elucidated that Women who consume a diet low in carbohydrates, but rich in vegetable fats and proteins, can cut their risk of heart disease by as much as 30% compared to just following a low-fat approach.

Researchers at Harvard University's schools of medicine and public health carried the study on 82,802 nurses for over two decades, and encourage a shift in the nutritional trend, reinforcing healthy fat found in such foods as nuts, avocados, liquid vegetable oils and seafood along with less-processed carbohydrates, including whole-grain bread and cereal, fruit and vegetables.

The low-fat approach which suggested eating 25%-35% of daily calories as fat, most of it from healthy sources, and boosting consumption of beans and legumes, fruit and vegetables, and healthy whole grains, was given by the writers of the 2000 and 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines, the American Heart Association and the federal government's National Cholesterol Education Program.

Published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the study emphasize that eating a low-carb diet and replacing animal fats with vegetable fats "can help reduce the risk of heart disease," said Alice Lichtenstein, professor at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

The study also informed that this diet pattern do not have much effect on body weight, which people feared earlier and jumped to the very low carbohydrate diet recommended by late physician Robert Atkins.

"We didn't really design the study to look at weight loss," noted lead author Frank Hu, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. But after analyzing 20 years of food information collected from participants who reported eating a moderately reduced carbohydrate diet, Hu and his colleagues concluded that there is "no significant long-term effect on body weight."

The findings suggest that "there's no magic formula for weight loss," noted Lichtenstein. "You still have to focus on calories."

Experts say that the new diet is related to the South Beach Diet, developed by Miami, Florida-area cardiologist Arthur Agatston, emphasizing the consumption of "good carbs" and "good fats."

The new findings have also put to rest concerns about heart problems, which once plagued the low-carb diet. But experts like physician Dean Ornish, an advocate of a very low-fat, vegetarian approach that has been confirmed to reverse blocked arteries, cautioned that the report should not be used to bring back to life the Atkins diet.

"I worry this will confuse people and potentially mislead them to think that low-fat diets don't decrease your risk of heart disease, because they do," Ornish said.

According to the low carbohydrate diet, nutritionists restrict carbohydrate intake and the dietary programme discourage people to consume foods high in carbohydrates (such as sugar, grains, and starches), limiting or replacing them with foods rich in proteins, fats, and fiber.

The low-carb diet is similar to the South Beach, Atkins, and Zone diets, which have helped people to reduce weight more effectively than the conventional diets.

The low-carb diet has not been free from criticism but many researches have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of the diet. Several independent clinical trials have showed that low-carb diets can be fruitfully used to lose weight and risk factors for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, tended to improve in spite of increased consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol.

In a study conducted in Oakland (California) in 1965, it was found that in a 10 day period, subjects on this diet lost more body fat than did a group who fasted completely.