A low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet is linked to greater fat loss than a low-sugar diet, but also higher cholesterol levels
By Carissa Wong
5 August 2024
Keto diets involve getting most of your calories from fat
Shutterstock/George Dolgikh
Eating a keto diet, which entails consuming most of your calories from fat and very few from carbohydrates, does lead to fat loss, but may also clog arteries and negatively affect the gut microbiome.
Also known as a ketogenic diet, this way of eating forces the body to use a different type of fuel. Instead of relying on glucose from carbohydrates, it starts to rely on ketone bodies, a type of fuel the liver produces from stored fat, which leads to weight loss.
Previous studies have tracked health outcomes in people who follow a ketogenic diet compared with those who don’t, which suggest they have both harms and benefits.
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Now, Javier Gonzalez at the University of Bath in the UK and his colleagues have carried out a randomised controlled trial, the best kind of medical evidence. The researchers recruited 53 people with an average age of 34, none of whom were obese. They randomly assigned roughly a third to eat a ketogenic diet, in which all types of carbohydrates made up less than 8 per cent of their energy intake and fat constituted more than 70 per cent.
Another third of participants were told to eat a low-sugar diet, where “free” sugars – a type of carbohydrate found in foods such as syrups, cakes and biscuits – made up 5 per cent of their energy intake, while their non-free-sugar carbohydrate and fat intakes were 45 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively.