The (Questionable) Science of Low-Carb Diets
Eating carbs isn’t your problem, and stopping won’t be your solution
“Eat fewer carbs!”, the cookery section of your local bookshop scream out.
Little do those books know that, at worst, they’re hurrying you to your grave, and at best they’re peddling a second-rate alternative.
Let me set the scene.
Low-carb diets are more or less what they say on the tin: you eat fewer carbohydrates (pasta, bread, potatoes, rice) and replace them instead with either high-protein, high-fat diets (meat, fish, egg, dairy, nuts) and foods high in dietary fibre (a form of carbohydrate that isn’t broken down by humans, e.g. kale and spinach).
The first revolutionary low-carb diet was the Atkins diet of Dr Robert Atkins, published first in 1972 to the great criticism by the scientific community. However, the strongest condemnation of all comes from Atkins himself, who suffered from hypertension, heart attacks, and congestive heart failure at the time of his death.
Despite all the variants of low-carb diets that have come about since Atkins’ original, they’re all similar enough that I’ll paint with a broad brush in explaining why low-carb is probably not what you’re after.
