Experts from Harvard University recently found out that low fat diets are not very effective way when you are trying to lose weight. The research, which was published in The Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology, investigated 53 clinical trials and discovered that low-fat diets don't help people lose weight and maintain that weight loss for more than a year, the same is true with diets that contain higher amounts of fat.
Researchers discovered that, on average, study participants on low-fat diets lost and kept off six pounds after a year, while those that followed low-carb diets, which has more fat in it, lost about 8.5 pounds within a year. Lead study author Deidre Tobias, ScD, who is also an instructor and epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, told Yahoo Health that she was both surprised and not surprised by the results.
She explained that everyone has been promoting low fat diets for decades and we're still facing an obesity epidemic. We somehow knew something wasn't right in the message we were promoting, but she says she was surprised at how useless the low-fat diets were in the long run compared to other diets.
The results came just months after the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which is a group of independent scientists who check scientific literature on nutrition and give recommendations to the U.S. government, suggested to get rid of fat restriction from the list of daily of diets for the first time since 1980. The guideline currently suggests that our daily calories intake from fat should not be more than 35%.
There are some scientists who say that there shouldn't be a limit on fats in our daily diet. Some researchers even argue that all fats aren't created equally. They explained that eating foods that has healthy fats, like nuts, olive oil, and fish, can actually keep us away from diseases of the heart and other diseases.
They also emphasized that many low-fat and fat-free foods can be worse for our health than full-fat options. Tobias agrees that fats aren't created equally, saying that "bad fats are still bad fats." She encourages people to watch their intake of saturated fat and trans fats, which have been associated to a greater risk of developing heart disease.
