Has the actor Rob Lowe recently let you in on his “little chocolate-peanut butter secret?” If so, you were likely watching an ad for the Atkins Diet, a meal plan company that promotes weight loss through a "low carb” diet.
Meal plans that cut back how many carbohydrates you eat have promised slimmer waists for decades. The science behind this claim has drawn on just as long, and won’t be stopping soon. “The research will be ongoing forever,” says Jessica Alvarez, a registered dietician who studies metabolism and Type II diabetes at the Emory University School of Medicine. Though the studies are hard to do, it seems the dietary choice can lead to (at least temporary) weight loss. How exactly that happens, however, remains unclear.
New Research Debunks Low Carb Diet Theories
The original biological premise behind a low-carb diet was fairly straightforward. Carbohydrates trigger the release of insulin, a hormone that prompts tissues to absorb sugars and produce fat. At the same time, too many of these nutrients will slow your metabolism while growing your appetite.
In theory, if you eat fewer carbs, less insulin will pump through your body — triggering less fat production, a boosted metabolism and reduced hunger. Unfortunately, those assumed sequences of events and their evidence (such as a changed appetite) haven't borne out in research. "That hasn't really held up in the literature at all,” says Heather Seid, a registered dietician who runs the Bionutrition Research Core at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
