The BBC headline was ” Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests ” (Ref 1). In the US, CNN went with “ Low and high carb diets increase risk of early death, study finds ” (Ref 2). There were many similar, irresponsible, headlines worldwide that emanated from a study published in August 2018 in The Lancet Public Health journal (Ref 3). The Sydney Morning Herald warned “ People on low carb diets die younger, says science ” (Ref 4).
Let’s look at the ‘science’…
We need to make a critical point up front: every headline using the words “ low carb ” was wrong. The first sentence of the paper was “ Low carbohydrate diets …” This was also wrong. The full paper used the words “ low carbohydrate ” 40 times. That was also wrong – 40 times. Low carb diets have not been studied by this paper. Full stop. The average carbohydrate intake of the lowest fifth of people studied was 37%. That’s a high carb diet to anyone who eats a low carb diet. As we will see below, the researchers managed to find just 315 people out of over 15,000 who consumed less than 30% of their diet in the form of carbohydrate. The average carb intake of these 315 people was still over 26%. Not even these people were anywhere near low carb eating. Hence, if you do eat a low carbohydrate diet, don’t worry – this paper has nothing to do with you. …More
