Are Low-Carb Diets Healthy?

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Epidemiologic evidence in areas like diet (where there is large individual variation) is very weak. The examples of false associations (heart disease correlates with sales of TV sets) are numerous. It is only when the epidemiology is backed up by other scientific evidence that it has impact. The most important epidemiologic evidence in nutrition is that during the epidemic of obesity and diabetes, almost all of the increase in calories was due to an increase in carbohydrates. The reason this has more force than a simple association is that carbohydrates stimulate insulin production which is known to be an anabolic hormone. More important, however, is that whereas association does not prove causality, the lack of association is an argument against causality. During the obesity – diabetes epidemic fat consumption, and even saturated fat consumption, stayed about the same. In fact, for men the absolute number of calories of fat or saturated fat consumed by men went down. If we were starting from scratch without prior prejudice the burden of proof would be a low-fat diets not low carbohydrate diets. I summarized some of the arguments with references on the two internet sites.