The day you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Results from the Look AHEAD study have been published. When I first wrote about this study (HERE), it had been prematurely halted because the intervention was providing no benefits. Everybody was in a state of shock and awe because Low Fat didn’t save lives. But that was before we even had the data.
Reminder: the “intensive lifestyle intervention” consisted of a Low Fat Diet & exercise. The results? Yes, they lost more weight than control, but they also took more Orlistat (of which I’m not a fan, see HERE for why):
Orlistat
Their normal diets were not healthy, but neither was low fat –>
Medication use increased drastically in both groups. The pundits have gone wild because medication use was lower in the intensive Low Fat group at the end of the study, but this is Nutrition Disinformation 2.0. Eerily reminiscent of the recent Mediterranean Diet study, the conclusions are the same: keep eating poorly and the need for medications will increase. You can call it a lot of things, but not “healthy.” The alternative –> How to define a “healthy” diet. Period.
Significant adverse events:
The only thing to reach statistical significance was more fractures in the intensive Low Fat group, but you didn’t read any headlines that said “Low Fat breaks bones.” Imagine if that happened on low carb [sigh] The next closest thing to statistical significance was increased amputations in the intensive Low Fat group :/
gem:
Translation: if you were healthy at baseline, then you could tolerate a low fat diet. Otherwise, not so much. This is exactly what happened in the Women’s Health Initiative.
needless to say, none of the “possible explanations” they considered were Low fat diet Fail.
), Kate Harrison (
), Michael Mosley (
), Bert Herring (
), John Daugirdas (
), and Martin Berkhan (
). Chances are you’re probably unwittingly already doing one of them, at least intermittently. The theoretical benefits are seemingly endless (albeit via few human trials), beyond the scope of my brain.
& 
protect liver against the ravages of alcohol? Tonight?
diet – the animals were given a liquid diet of complete nutrition and a LOT of booze. Not very applicable to humans, imo [hopefully]. Which brings up the question: how long does it take for coconut oil & dark chocolate to flex their hepato-protective muscles?
and 
(of the recent TMAO infamy) – may also provide some benefit by enhancing liver fat turnover (
, also found in red meat, also prevents some alcohol-induced liver pathologies [in rats] (
. Then, it was the 
eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids (EPA and DHA, respectively). Then, palmitoleic acid. Corn and soybean oil, on the other hand, are being appropriately recognized as bad. The utter hatred and fear of saturated fats is starting to wane, and we might even see a transition back to 
before I die (circa 2113). But today’s post is on another topic: trans fats, oxidized fish oils, and dairy fat.
CS (+ some other chemicals). But those kids didn’t do that. they ate less of other foods.
that warrants attention. (it could be the increasing fat intake, but for now let’s just say it’s RYGB per se). According to this pearl, weight loss of only 10% via diet alone causes energy expenditure crash by 394-500 kcal/d, and physiological replacement of leptin via subcutaneous injection can increase this by 234-454 kcal/d (