My wife and I have been on a very low carb / high fat diet for the last 4 months, and we have never felt better. Eating lots of eggs, bacon, steak, butter, some veggies and fruit. We both lost weight too. Also cut out processed food, sugar and grains — bread, pasta, rice, cereal — basically a ketogenic diet, which adapts the body to burning fat more readily.
We both have also noticed that we just feel more mental clarity, more energy and no cravings for junk food. It is amazing. I hope this message gets through in the U.S. eventually.
Everyone's an expert on food. If I ate what all the different experts told me to eat I'd be on a different diet every day. I bet a different group of nutritional scientists would take a look at these studies and find a completely different conclusion (and likely have). There is nothing special about Sweden to make me believe they know more about food than any other country.
It's great if you feel good with your diet, as it's your body. But it's a single data point. Trying to build a diet that works for everyone is like trying to find a single programming language for everyone. A diet that works for you over a few months isn't enough time to discover its true benefits, just as a terrible diet's effects aren't obvious potentially for much of a lifetime.
There are plenty of people around the world's whose diet is not high fat, low carb (the Mediterranean for one) but still remain healthy so that isn't a great indicator that there is strictly one way to eat.
I took enough biochemistry and nutritional chemistry classes in college to know how complicated our processing of food is, and how difficult it is to make guidelines for how people should eat.
This article misrepresents the underlying research and seems to invent some facts from whole cloth.
> Sweden has become the first Western nation to develop national dietary guidelines that reject the popular low-fat diet dogma in favor of low-carb high-fat nutrition advice.
Where is the evidence that Sweden has developed "national dietary guidelines"? All the sources link back to the paper [1][2] entitled "Dietary Treatment for Obesity". Clearly, dietary treatment for obesity is not the same as national dietary guidelines, and the conclusions of a paper are not the same as government policy.
Further, the paper found low-carb diets more effective for weight loss only in the first six months. Long term, it found no difference in the effectiveness of low-fat vs. low carb. To quote from google translate:
> In the long run there are no differences in efficacy between weight loss tips on strict and moderate carbohydrate diet, low-fat diets, högproteinkost, Mediterranean diet, diet focuses on low-glycemic load diet or a high proportion of monounsaturated fats.
Further, on the "diet doctor" website, under the section "Warnings Against LCHF Dismissed" [3], it quotes the study criticizing some studies that concluded low-carb diets are unhealthy for not adequately distinguishing between different classes of low-carb diets, specifically those high in fast-food and those not. This may be a valid criticism, but is not the same as endorsing the long-term health of a low-carb diet. The "diet doctor" concludes "We simply don’t know" about the long-term effects of various macronutrient compositions on health, which is fair, but this is a long way short of the national government of Sweden endorsing high-fat low-carb diets as unequivocally healthier than high-carb low-fat diets.
It may appear that I'm against low-carb diets; I'm not. I just think this is a very poor and misleading article.
[1] [pdf warning] http://www.sbu.se/upload/Publikationer/Content0/1/Mat_vid_fe...
[2] [google translation of conclusions] http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&prev...
[3] http://www.dietdoctor.com/swedish-expert-committee-low-carb-...
I've been happily low-carb for the last couple of years or so. It's worked great for me.
Occasionally I relapse (hmm, chocolate), and every time I do for any substantial period, I see the effect on my weight. So long as I stick to low-carb, I don't have to worry about what I eat... just eat as much as I feel like, whenever I feel like - but low carb.
I've lost 48 pounds in the last 2 years (188 => 140) by simply cutting all carbs and most processed foods out of my diet. No change in habits, no additional exercise. My cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood were good to begin with, but are now EXCELLENT.
My typical day I eat 3-4 eggs, half avocado, 1/2lb of red meat/chicken/fish, 2 servings of greens, 1 serving of vegetables, 2-3 servings of cheese.
Never felt better. It is frustrating because people never believe me and just tell me that I have a fast metabolism.
For some easy to read, well summarized evidence of high fat diets, Science journalist Gary Taubes has a few books on the subject http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259?tag...
I would highly recommend watching the BBC documentary "The Men Who Made Us Fat". This reaches broadly the same conclusions. Fat is fairly innocuous, but the real danger food is Sugar, and artificial sweeteners tend to make things worse.
Loading up beacon and eggs while putting butter in your coffee and refusing slices of bread (whole grain of course) and then explaining you do it for health reasons is priceless ;)
On serious note, evidence is there it's time to at least tell people they have a choice. Low carb did wonders to my family members (fat whole life, skinny and feeling great now) and when I keep at it (instead of succumbing to sugar addiction) I fell way better as well. It's safe, many (maybe even most) people function much better while eating this way and there is no way you get fat on it.
The People's Pharmacy (well regarded U.S. public radio show):
Show 895 The Great Cholesterol Myth
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2013/03/09/895-the-great-chol...
Further recent discussion on Wisconsin Public Radio:
http://www.wpr.org/shows/peoples-pharmacy-special-pledge-dri...
Wow at the low-carb comments. Way to reject a dogma with another dogma.
I have a daily intake of 400g of carbohydrates. According to you I'd be overwheight and dying of diabetes, cancer, metabolic syndrome and whatnot.
Exercise daily, provide adequate protein intake and watch out the calories. That's it. No need to blame food but yourselves.
Being a Swede in Sweden, last I heard was that everyone was giving critique to LCHF due to high risks of cancer[1][2].
[1] http://www.kostdoktorn.se/aftonbladet-varnar-for-lchf-cancer
[2] http://www.metro.se/nyheter/lakare-varnar-for-lchf-cancer/EV...
So when people say, "the science is decided," remember that science almost unanimously pushed high carb low fat diets for decades before people challenged it.
As my healthiest, I was on Low Carb High Fat. It all went away when I went to Asia... :/
Ok, bacon, sausage, and egg omelette it is for dinner, then!
Isn't switching from low-fat to low-carb just trading one dogma for another?
The problem with low-carb diets is that most people use it as an excuse to consume animal products. A vegan low-carb diet is fine.
Fat is not the enemy. Fat that you eat can be converted handily into energy. An overabundance of carbs is the enemy! It's hilarious to me that people who think nothing of downing a 48 oz Dr Pepper, then getting a refill, after a dinner featuring potatoes, pasta, and bread will thumb their nose at having a 12 oz glass of whole milk. Those carbs, especially when consumed late in the day, go straight into fat.
The nutrition information we were given in school is mostly a load of baloney, and puts me in mind of the cargo cult science Richard Feynman discussion from the other day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6543791 . It's interesting how much of this nutrition information passes without being scientifically proven.