You know those keto zealots who claim keto is the best diet for weight loss and everyone should do it? I know one because I gave him a box full of ‘you’re blocked’ right after I wrote my first post on Medium. These people would be completely banned if I were in power because they spread misinformation based on misinterpreted data.
They’ll go ‘keto is better for weight loss because lower insulin levels and induced ketosis which I don’t know much about but I’m sure black magic has something to do with it.’ That’s where misinterpretation of the research comes into our story.
They cherry-pick studies involving higher protein intakes in the ketogenic groups. This gives an unfair playing field for keto because protein seems to be the most satiating macronutrient — it makes you eat fewer calories (source).
Even worse, they throw studies at you forgetting to mention that calorie intake isn’t matched between the ketogenic and high-carb groups.
So these studies can effoff. But what would happen if we looked at studies that matched protein and/or calorie intake between the keto and non-keto conditions? Kevin D. Hall answered this perfectly in a 2017 review:
He is right you know. I’ve been digging into the research so thoroughly that my eyes have begun to flow blood — except for one study, all tightly controlled studies that matched protein and calorie intake between the keto and non-keto groups showed no fat loss advantage of the keto diet.
This study did this:
Despite vastly different carbohydrate intake between the groups — 31g vs. 300g — both groups lost similar amounts of fat. Oh, and the high-carb group consumed 147g of sugar while the keto group only 10g (suck on this, ‘clean eaters’). I told you long ago that sugar doesn’t prevent fat loss.
The other study by Soenen et al. put 132 participants into four calorie-matched diets differing in protein and/or carbohydrate intake:
So keto superiority is all complete claptrap so far. Let’s continue because I promised you six studies.
A 2017 study randomly assigned 47 men into two groups:
Since both diets were equal in calorie intake (2091 kcal/d) and protein (17% of total calories), similar reductions in body weight have been observed:
A small deviation from the post:
I started writing this post at 6:30 am when it was still raining. But now, raining has stopped and the sun came out. So I want to go out and get my steps in. This is why I’ll cram the rest three studies into one fancy-pants infographic.
Deal with it:
Now, by all the offensive words — fuck, dumbfuck, motherfucking, moronic, etc. — I tend to use in my posts, you might have noticed that I’m not really what people would call ‘a scientist.’ This is why I managed to read through only six studies until I started looking out of the window due to monumental boredom.
Luckily, Hall and Guo conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of carbohydrate restriction on body fat which included only calorie- and, protein-matched studies. Unlike me, they’re well-educated, well-spoken professionals and so they found 32 studies with carbs ranging from 1 to 83% and fat ranging from 4 to 84% of total calories. Lo and behold:
In sum, I hate keto diet. It doesn’t work better than other diets for weight loss or health outcomes. I think it’s a hopelessly moronic diet. It’s not for me. And as I wrote in this article, it’s not for most people either. It’s just too fucking rigid.
But if you happened to be an outlier who found keto sustainable, keep doing it. I don’t think this advice matters, though. I don’t think keto people read my stuff. They get pissed (at science?) after the first paragraph and go back to pretending that their homemade low-carb chocolate bar tastes just as good as the real Snickers. Phleeease.
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Originally published by me on Medium on July 16, 2022
