Cutting Carbs Is So 2003

By Melaina Juntti

Have you cut down your carbohydrate consumption? It turns out that low-carb diets, as well as which types of fats and proteins you eat to replace those carbs, could be a matter of life and death—literally—according to new research published in Annals of Internal Medicine. In a study of more than 130,000 men and women, investigators found that the mortality rate of those adhering to low-carbohydrate diets was 12 percent higher than people with sufficient carb intakes. In addition, among the low-carb contingent, those who loaded up on vegetable-based fats and proteins (nuts, legumes) were 20 percent less likely to die than dieters who turned to animal products like red meat. The lesson: Keep eating complex, healthy carbs and make sure to work artichokes, chickpeas, and pumpkinseeds into your weekly menu. And don’t try food fads. (Hey, it wasn’t long ago that millions of Americans thought jumbo bagels were healthy.)

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1 Article comment

PB

12/29/2010 at 10:07 AM

After reading the full article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, I believe Ms. Juntti did a disservice to this fine paper. The deleterious effect of the low-carb diets (12% increase in risk of death)
was limited exclusively to the "animal food" pattern, but even that was inconsistent and failed the statistical test for a trend (which is testing if a higher and higher consumption of a low carb diet is associated with greater and greater risk of death). This paper lumped all animal products into the same category--so it's impossible to determine if a "low carb, healthy animal" pattern might be beneficial--one that focuses on healthier animal products (e.g. leaner meats and less animal fat) or other measures of diet quality.

The questionnaires used in this type of study are extremely limited in their ability to discriminate dietary behaviors, which is important to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The authors of the Annals paper even g

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