Should health authorities limit fat restrictions and encourage people to eat fewer processed foods, particularly those with refined carbohydrates?
A question many weight loss seekers ask…Can you lose weight while placing no restrictions on your fat intake? Diets like the Atkins diet and others that are low carb, say you can and now there is new research to support this.
According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, a racially diverse group of 148 obese men and women were given diets to follow. Half were put on low-fat regimes which limited their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, while the other half followed low-carb diets that involved eating mostly protein and fat. Neither group was given calorie limits. Throughout one year, those on the low-carb diet lost around 8 pounds more than the low-fat group, shed more body fat, and showed greater improvements in cholesterol levels and other measures of cardiovascular health. Those on the low-fat diet did lose weight, but most of it was muscle, not fat.
As Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times, “To my knowledge, this is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions. It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories. And that’s really important because someone can change what they eat more easily than trying to cut down on their calories.
So, should health authorities limit fat restrictions and encourage people to eat fewer processed foods, particularly those with refined carbohydrates? According to researchers, this recent study is enough to say yes.
While the average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, retailers & supermarkets can be influential in tailoring customer's choices and providing tips and explanations on what the guidelines are and what they mean.