Carbs, Fats, and the Mortality Maze: What Your Diet Means for Your Life Expectancy Grandma used to constantly say, “Eat your carbs, they give you energy!” but now, personal trainers are encouraging you to stop eating carbs and switch to keto. What gives, then? I stumbled uncovered an intriguing cohort research that may or may not put some of these arguments to rest. But guys, it’s data! In addition, data makes me more excited as a medical student than an aerobic workout. The study looked at how
Keto diets are unhealthy. You will lose weight in a very unhealthy way.
We’re overweight because we eat too many calories and we do not exercise enough.
I mean, we’re overweight in significant part because being overweight is simply a defined point. It’s based on 1970s statistical analysis of the weights of straight white men. It’s defined based on BMI, a statistical scale, and not based on any kind of weight threshold where we start seeing a meaningful phase shift in outcomes. You could get rid of a lot of obesity by just raising the setpoint of “obese” on the scales and your new system wouldn’t necessarily be more or less medically sound/evidence based than the current one.
Even this article is making sweeping claims based on a tiny cohort of a nondiverse group of people. It’s… just not interesting science. Very little science around weight is particularly good. Worse, it has some really obvious logical flaws. There’s an implication here that eating fewer carbs increases your risk of death – it could be the opposite, that people who are more likely to die eat fewer carbs. There’s a reason people use the word “healthy” to describe big appetites – not because gorging yourself is good, but because poor appetite is an almost universal sign of bad health. And the “40% increase” in cancer from high-fat diets may represent a very small increase in actual total risk of cancer because these factors are already so damned low.
Most people should just worry a lot less about how fat other people are because it’s really none of their business. We should be making sure people have access to healthy, fresh food and that processed food companies face strict regulatory oversight for predatory practices just because keeping people fed well is something we value, not because we hate fatness.
at this point everything in that food pyramid is bad for you
Everything in moderation. Carbs and fats aren’t either good or bad for you, they’re good in the correct amount and bad in an uncorrect amount (too little/too much).
yeah, i’m currently just calorie counting because it seems like every single food is going to send me in to an early grave according to the internet.
Having had to learn about ketoacidosis for my schooling, I was always confused how this keto diet was a good idea… ketones = bad is what I was told. I’m assuming you’re not going to the point of ketoacidosis, but having your body create ketones still doesn’t sound like something I’d want.
It would be interesting with what the carbs were substituted. As far as we know most sources of carbs are really bad for you. Some even worse than plain sugar, because they raise your blood sugar so much in a short time.
Of course fats (and proteins) are necessary to be healthy, because without them you will die. If you don’t provide enough carbs to burn the body will metabolize its own though hence the usefulness of external carbs is questionable except for calories. That’s the whole idea behind low carb and keto diets.
It would be really interesting to see this study repeated with another demographic. At least I assume that the normal diet is very carb heavy for most people there which might skew the results in different ways.
It was an interesting read nonetheless and I hope there will be more studies on this topic.
Limiting both carbohydrates and fats is unwise and not ketogenic. New conventional wisdom is to eat one or the other, but not both.
deleted by creator
No. Limiting carbs does not in fact shorten your life span. Eating too much fat is bad for you and fat shouldn’t be a major part of your diet. The healthiest way to eat is focusing on high quality sources of protein like beef while avoiding carbs like bread and pasta. Some vegetables are good for you, others are too high in carbs to be healthy. Fruits should be treated like ice cream and cookies and consumed sparingly as a treat. Fruit is not in fact healthy for you.
Is there a keto community in the fediverse? If there is, spend some time there.
“The healthiest way to eat” is a balanced diet of real food while minimizing hyper processed junk that’s one single source of macronutrients without all the micronutrients cooking from raw ingredients yourself provides.
You can prove “protein” is bad if your protein is McDonalds, “carbs” are bad if your carbs are wonder bread, and “fats” are bad if your fats are empty greasy deep fried food. But a healthy diet has all three, just from actual food and not the freezer aisle.
Damn, you’re stupid son.
Carbs are bad regardless of source. There is no real difference between a McDonald’s hamburger bun and one bought at the grocery store or made at home.
Protein is good regardless of source unless it has some other poisons added in. Yes, McDonald’s patties aren’t the best meat you can buy, but, if you are on the road and McDonald’s is the easiest or only source of food, having them leave off the bun is better than nothing.
Fats aren’t bad either and the whole good versus bad fats is mostly bullshit. Fat shouldn’t be a major part of your diet and can have you gain weight even on keto if you eat too much. Fat should be eaten to satiety.
You have a nice idiotic life now, you hear.
Please cite literally any major medical organization that advocates for avoiding eating whole fruit. I’ll wait.
You should look into what fruit mostly is. Hint it’s sugar. You should also look into what sugar does to your insulin levels and how it affects your body.
I’m not surprised that the shills and trolls who don’t understand basic biochemistry are arguing with me here. I will however do 2 things. 1) I will continue to comment like this in these stupid fucking posts that are misleading at best and false at worst. 2) I will block you idiots so you can’t follow me around and I don’t have to see your inanity.
I’d just point out that you have failed to cite literally any major medical organization that advocates for avoiding eating whole fruit.
Keto is unhealthy. A ketogenic diet is unhealthy unless directed by a medical professional. A real one. With a medical degree that can be taken away from malpractice.
For example, a dietitian is a highly educated professional with a degree and professional certification. A nutritionist is a quack that is selling snake oil and answers to nobody. People selling keto are nutritionists at best.
Your idiocy is showing.
No one “sells” keto. Keto is simply carbs under a certain percentage with a focus on protein with fat to satiety. There is no money to be made selling keto to those with working brain cells because you don’t have to buy any supplements or special products.
