Study says low-fat and low-carb diet may not be helpful

While some diets say eating less fat is better for losing weight, other say eating less carbs is the key. According to a new study, it may not really matter which diet you choose. Researchers were trying to figure out which diet may be better than the other – a topic that has long been controversial. Many people who are looking for a new diet often wonder which diet is best or which one is better than another.

In the study, those who were on a low-fat diet got less than 30% of calories from fat. On the other hand, those on high-fat and low-carb diets usually got at least 30% of calories from fat and less than 10% from carbs. Of all the diets they looked at, none of them seemed better than the other.

The researchers analyzed 53 studies that compared the amount of weight that people had lost one year or more after being on various diets. The commons types include low-fat diets, high-carb diets, low-carb diet, and high-fat diets. All have been shown to have some range of health benefits as well as help with weight loss.

The results of the study showed that there was no significant difference in weight loss between low-fat and high-fat diets. However, the low-fat diets were slightly better than the low-carb diets as people who were on low-fat diets had lost about 2.5 more pounds after at least a year. Overall, the difference was quite small and the researchers concluded that there were no real health benefits of choosing one over the other, and that none of them may fare.

According to the lead author of the study, Dr. Deirdre Tobias: “We thought comparing low vs. high fat diets would help us identify the optimal diet, but it's clear that just focusing on how much fat is in your diet is not what is going to help address the obesity epidemic," Dr. Deirdre Tobias is an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The study was published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

"The main conclusion is not that low-fat diets are pretty bad compared to other diets, but that they're all bad," said Kevin D. Hall, senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.