Kerri Waldron
If you have enough willpower to follow a diet that forbids things like bread, pasta, and fries, you probably expect all that sacrifice to work like freaking magic But low-carb, high-fat diets that resemble Paleo eating plans may actually trigger some pretty rapid weight gain, according to new research on mice recently published in the medical journal Nutrition & Diabetes.
In the study, mice fed a calorie-controlled diet that was low in carbs and high in fat gained 15 percent of their original body weight after only nine weeks on the diet. They also developed insulin resistance, a precursor to type-2 diabetes. The implications: Humans who eat a similar diet for a bit could end up way more vulnerable to obesity and disease – especially when they reintroduce carbs to their diet (as humans do).
Granted, that’s mostly speculation because the study was done on mice instead of people. But the results were alarming enough for researchers to recommend that humans find a different eating plan – despite the Paleo diet’s many advocates, like the hunters and gathers who ate this way for millions of years, and those who more recently revived a modern-day version of what caveman and women ate.
For what it’s worth, the specific guidelines of the ~official~ Paleo diet seem a lot more nuanced than what the mice ate in this experiment – and the same goes for anything a living thing might eat IRL outside a laboratory setting. Still, this new science is as good as any reason to keep some of life’s greatest pleasures (CARBS 😍!) on your plate.
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Source: uk.style.yahoo.com
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