Tag Archive for: low-carb diet

When It Comes to Carbs, Quality Matters

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You probably guessed right after reading Tuesday’s Memo that there are benefits from the quality of carbohydrates a person eats on a low-carb diet. In fact, one might say that because the carb intake is very low, every decision matters. Before getting into the results, let’s use the definition to identify the carbohydrate quality used in the study.

Good Carbs, Bad Carbs

High-quality carbohydrate diets are characterized by higher intakes of whole grains, non-starchy vegetables, whole fruits, nuts, and legumes, with correspondingly higher dietary fiber.

Lower quality carbohydrate diets are characterized by higher intakes of refined grains, sugar-sweetened beverages, baked desserts, and other sweet snacks.

The Results

While there were numerous statistical applications used, when comparing the lowest quintile of high-quality carbohydrates with the highest, as the percentage of high-quality carbohydrates increased, the markers of inflammation decreased.

When comparing the lowest quintile of low-quality carbohydrates with the highest quintile, the markers of inflammation increased as the percentage intake increased.

Understand that the high-quality carb eaters ate low-quality carbs as well, just not as much as the low-quality carb eaters. That means you don’t have to eat only one way. I’ve been developing a carb theory, one that goes along with the 80/20 rule: if you can eat well 80% of the time, you can loosen up 20% of the time, at least when it comes to carbohydrate quality.

The Bottom Line

This was not the be-all, end-all study; they used food frequency questionnaires, and I’ve talked ad nauseum about why I think they’re not much better than no info at all. But it was a practical approach to establishing that eating better most of the time can have benefits and may even reduce the risk of disease. We’ll see if there are future papers that track morbidity and mortality in the same group of subjects. Until then, eat less, eat better, and move more.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Current Developments in Nutrition. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.107479

Lower Carb Diet: Does Quality Count?

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The Framingham Study began in 1948 and focused on monitoring nutrition and cardiovascular disease among other conditions. The purpose was to monitor the dietary and health habits as well as the health outcomes of a large group of people over time. Much of what we know about diet and cardiovascular disease comes from the longitudinal data collected; that study continues today with a focus on the children whose parents were part of the original study. Study participants have regularly scheduled physicals and blood work as well as dietary intake assessed by a food frequency questionnaire.

The researchers wanted to study the effect of high-quality carbohydrate intake versus low-quality carbohydrate intake on markers of inflammation in those people following a lower carbohydrate diet. These were not hard-core ketogenic diet followers; the average carbohydrate intake was about 41% instead of the typical 50% to 60%. Subjects had similar intakes of percentage of protein and fat intake. They were compared by the quality of the carbohydrates that they ate.

The subjects were followed for over six years to see if there were any changes in inflammatory markers, because inflammation is related to an increased risk of many diseases and conditions including cardiovascular disease. Was it beneficial to eat better carbs? I’ll let you know on Saturday along with comments about the significance of this study.

Tomorrow night is the Insiders conference call. If you want to participate and get your questions answered, become an Insider by 8 p.m. ET tomorrow night; I’ll include you in the call or you can listen to the replay.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Current Developments in Nutrition. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.107479