ExRx.net

I thought we should have a thread dedicated to scientific studies related to diet. So, voila! When ever I'm in a heated debate with friends or family members about the benefits of a high-fat, low-carb diet, I never have anything to back me up. So hopefully with this as a reference point, I can challenge people to question thier views on dietary health.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21062488
"There were significant decreases in body mass index, waist circumference, body fat ratio, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, triglyceride and insulin levels in all subjects."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12761364
"Severely obese subjects with a high prevalence of diabetes lost more weight during six months on a carbohydrate-restricted diet than on a calorie- and fat-restricted diet. This finding should be interpreted with caution, given the small magnitude of overall and between-group differences in weight loss in these markedly obese subjects and the short duration of the study"

I'll have to gather some stuff together. I'll try to break it up into categories, since there are many different aspects to this.

Yeah, It would be a mess with just a big list of random studies.

Dietary cholesterol provided by eggs and plasma lipoproteins in healthy populations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16340654

There doesn't appear to be any upper limit on how many eggs can be eaten.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1953 ... stractPlus

It appears that the liver just reduces the amount of cholestrol that it produces since enough is in the diet.

Skill execution and sleep deprivation: effects of acute caffeine or creatine supplementation - a randomized placebo-controlled trial

http://www.jissn.com/content/8/1/2

Get your sleep, but when you can't, cafine and creatine can help.

That article is a little light on details... I can only see the title.

Try this one: http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199103283241306

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648
"A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat."

There's no benefit to fat beyond the basic hormonal needs.

That's one of the biggest problems I have with the 'low carbers'. You don't need excessive fat, 60-100g a day is plenty (540-900 calories)

These whole 70%fat 25%protein 5% carb type diets are horrific. Fat should never make up that much of your diet - it's pointless. Just a little rant.

Also, here's a review of a study I thought was interesting:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/resear ... eview.html

This thread topic is focused on Clinical Trials.

That's a review of a clinical trial, probably more informative than just giving one for self interpretation. :p

Well in all fairness, you edited that link in after I posted my reply.

Also people should be able to self interpret the evidence and come to a decision themselves.

The problem with that is that most people, including myself, have very little knowledge of how clinicals are done and as such - unable to tell the good experiments from the bad.

Which is the reason that low-carb has become so prevalent, people cherry pick from bad studies or misinterpret studies in general.

I'm like that, I can't tell which studies suck and which don't. That's why I never comment on them.

I do however take ideas from studies, ie low carb, fasting etc and try them out for myself. The ones that work, I keep, the ones that don't, I don't.

For example I know now that I need less carbs than i used to eat so I replaced them in my diet with more protein and fat. I feel and look better because of it, but I know that my results are individual to me and someone else will have different needs.

I think studies just give you ideas. If you read a study that says doing X pre workout leads to better gains then give it a try. I much prefer just to get stuck in than argue about the hypotheticals.

just my .02p (that's p for pence, I deal in £ sterling).

What does need have to do with it? The post was about whether or not it was bad. It concluded it's not. Why is eating more than a certain amount of fat bad? How exactly are you determining how much fat someone should and shouldn't have? Why exactly does "pointless" matter in this context? For that matter what do you even mean by that? Is there some reason why you can't get that much of your caloric intake from fat regardless of how much you need?

"Food was not provided for the subjects (arguably the biggest limitation of the study)"
That is the problem I have with the study. Who knows what else the people ate, other than some being limited in fruit. Not to mention of all the variables, fruit is hardly one to worry much about with an otherwise uncontrolled diet. I'm not sure what they were testing for either. It's the combination of fructose and glucose, as well as the quantity of it people have because of it being in soda and other beverages.

Now if they took two groups of bodybuilders on identical cutting diets, and had one getting their carbs from veggies and grains, and the others getting theirs from fruit, then you might have something.