There is hot debate these days as to whether low fat diets are good or bad for us, and whether we have gone overboard in promoting low fat as the way to go in guidelines over the last several decades.

A recent study, published in the British Medical Journal, conducted a systematic review and meta analysis, with their goal actually being to determine whether dietary lifestyle interventions targeting weight loss reduces mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer in people with obesity.  They hadn’t intended to study low fat diets in particular, but out of the 54 randomized clinical trials that they identified for analysis, all but one of these trials described a low fat diet being included as at least one of their interventions (and all but three trials included some form of exercise advice).  The diets were also usually low in saturated fat.

In this analysis of over 30,000 clinical trial participants in studies of at least 1 year duration, they found that weight loss interventions decreased mortality by 18%, corresponding to 6 fewer deaths per 1000 participants in the studies.  Weight loss after 1 year was 3.4kg (7.5lb), and about 2.5kg (5.5lb) after 2-3 years.

That this study found that dietary interventions reduce mortality in people with obesity is noteworthy, as the amount of weight lost was fairly low, and also because singular diet studies have not shown a reduction in mortality.  In fact, the only obesity studies that have really shown a reduction in mortality are those of bariatric surgery.  It is encouraging that perhaps a mortality benefit from lifestyle intervention emerges when we look at enough people together (as in the current study).

But does this mean that low fat diets are the way to go?   Not necessarily.

It is true that we cannot know if the benefits seen in this study were because of the weight lost, because of the low fat nature of the diets, or a combination of both.

However, a problem with the low fat diet approach in real life (ie outside of a clinical trial) is that it most often results in overconsumption of carbohydrates, which has likely contributed to the increase in obesity that we have seen in the last several decades.  The Mediterranean diet, which is not a low fat diet (fat intake is 35-47% of total calories, with a focus on the healthier unsaturated fats), has been shown to be associated with a reduction in mortality (in systematic reviews and meta analyses of cohort and case control studies).

We must also remember that all systematic reviews and meta analyses of studies are subject to limitations in interpretation as they are compiling data from a variety of different studies, so they must all be taken with a grain of salt.

BOTTOM LINE: This study suggests that weight reducing diets (which happened to be mostly low fat diets) may reduce mortality.  I would now like to see more studies of diets with moderate carbohydrate restriction and more generous unsaturated fat intake to understand if these diets may have the same benefit.

 

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