New study: High-fat food is good for people with diabetes

May 15 2012 by in Diabetes

There is no reason to fear fat anymore. High fat food is even good for people with diabetes, according to a new high-quality Swedish study of 61 patients:

Diabetes patients randomized to a high fat (20% carb) diet improved their blood sugar, cholesterol and could reduce their diabetes medications.
Patients randomized to conventional (obsolete) low fat advice did not improve anything.

No surprises. Previous trials have shown similar results: Fat is good for the health of people with diabetes. So why do most people with diabetes still get the failed old low fat advice? By now it should be borderline criminal.

MedicalXpress: High-fat diet lowered blood sugar and improved blood lipids in diabetics

The study

9 comments

1
Rachel
May 15 2012
Thank you for this- emailing it to my (diabetic) father now! :)

Nothing to do with diet but I'm going to miss the last episode of "The Bridge" next weekend as I'm away. I just want to say darn you Swedes (and Danes) and your cop shows, I'm totally hooked on this. I can't help looking at what people are eating though. In one episode Saga microwaved a pizza. So much for LCHF Sweden! ;)

(A TV show full of murders, corruption and unhappy families, and all I can think about is low carb diets...oh dear...)
2
David Hogan
May 15 2012
What were the respective protein and fat percentages of the two diets?
3
Demosthenes
May 15 2012
@David
"The patients were randomised to either an LCD or a
traditional LFD, both with an energy content of 6,694 kJ/day
(1,600 kcal/day) for women or 7,531 kJ/day (1,800 kcal/day)
for men. Randomisation was not stratified and was based on
drawing blinded ballots. The LCD had an energy content
where 50 energy per cent (E%) was from fat, 20 E% was from
carbohydrate and 30 E% was from protein. The LFD had a
nutrient compo sit ion that was similar to that tradition ally
recommended for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Sweden,
with 30 E% from fat (less than 10 E% from saturated fat), 55–
60 E% from carbohydrate and 10–15 E% from protein."
4
Peggy Holloway
May 15 2012
Well, duh!
5
Arshad
May 15 2012
There is another news in Medical express:

Sugar makes you stupid: Study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-sugar-stupid-high-fructose-diet...
6
Peggy Holloway
May 16 2012
Reading further, I now wonder how much better the subjects would have done on a higher-fat, lower-carb ketogenic diet. The carb content was still much higher than I consume to prevent the "Type II Diabetes" that has plagued my family.
7
Peggy Holloway
May 17 2012
I've been looking for a report on this study in my local newspaper and on Huffpo - nothing so far. But my local paper reported that high HDL levels are not associated with any health improvements and that coffee drinkers live longer - both reports based on epidemiological "Studies." Sigh.
8
Sue
January 7 2013
Seriously, 'high quality study' and '61 patients' in the same sentence? They should really be repeating the study with a much larger population sample before recommending this diet to anyone. Especially taking into consideration that diabetes in itself is a huge risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and a high-fat diet will only increase that risk.
9
Jack
November 1 2013
Sue, you are right about the study being too small but very wrong about high fat diet increasing the risk for cardiovascular disease. Start reading, it's carbs which increase that risk not fat. That theory is dead and buried.

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