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Oct 31

Low-fat diets do not lead to greater long-term weight loss …

Long Term Weight Loss Comments Off on Low-fat diets do not lead to greater long-term weight loss …

Updated October 30, 2015 16:21:41

Pour the skim milk down the sink scientists have confirmed low-fat diets do not lead to greater weight loss in the long term compared to other diets including high-fat.

The United States-based study has been published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet following a large meta-analysis involving more than 68,000 non-pregnant adults.

US-based epidemiologist and lead author Deirdre Tobias said she was not surprised to see low-fat diets were not effective.

"There is no good evidence for recommending low-fat diets," she said.

The study found the diets did not lead to greater weight loss in the long-term compared to higher-fat diets, such as low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean programs, of similar intensity.

The analysis showed no difference in the average weight loss between reduced-fat diets and higher-fat diets, said to have been followed for at least a year.

Reduced-fat diets only led to greater weight loss when compared to no diet at all, but they did result in less weight loss compared with low-carb interventions.

"I think that it's not new to researchers in the field of nutrition and obesity that low-fat diets don't work for most people most of the time but what this study brought to the table was definitively showing this," Dr Tobias said.

"We've seen over the last several years and decades that low-fat diets were promoted as the way to lose weight but nonetheless if you look around we saw that rates of obesity skyrocketed during the same time."

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one in four children and two out of three Australian adults are overweight or obese.

Professor Amanda Lee from the Queensland University of Technology said the systematic literature review only compared two different types of diets and did not set out the best way of losing weight.

"We already knew what this study found and it's just comparing two diets," she said.

"The question that the public would like to know is what's the best way to lose weight, not if diet A is better than diet B," she said.

Professor Lee's professional recommendation is to follow a diet consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines.

"We should reduce intake of foods that are high in saturated fats, now these are energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods or junk foods and not only do we need to reduce the intake of those high in saturated fats but also those with added sugar, with salt and high in alcohol too," she said.

"The issue is that they need to be easy to follow and easy to maintain and often people start off on diets, particularly fad diets and then they can't continue them for the required amount of time."

Professor Lee said people also needed to be wary that diets need to be followed for a long period of time to provide all the protective foods and nutrients for good health.

"It's not just a matter of the type of fat in the diet, it's the matter of the total quality of the dietary pattern," she said.

ABC/AAP

Topics: diet-and-nutrition, health, medical-research, australia, united-states

First posted October 30, 2015 14:21:59

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