The infamous low-carb diet which has been loved by many and loathed by the rest has officially been named one of the least healthy diet options for 2022. But why is a diet considered so bad, so popular? Interestingly, its popularity comes in the form of how fast you can lose weight if you do it properly, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t nutritional effects or weight gain if you decide to stop.
Back in the day, it was the Atkins diet, which was very similar to the keto diet. The main difference was on Atkins you were encouraged to slowly bring back carbohydrates, known as carbs, into your regimen. On keto, you are expected to keep your carbs continuously low and your fats high. When the carbs are cut, our body enters a state of ketosis, a metabolic state that claims to burn fat instead of what it normally burns, glucose.
Yet a panel of diet experts, who were asked to judge famous diets based on their nutritional content, disease prevention, weight loss potential and healthiness still found keto to be one of the worst in these factors. Though, this isn’t the first time there have been concerns for keto. Nutrition experts claim that along with an imbalance of nutrition and the overall restriction of carbs can cause the diet to be difficult to follow. Along with cardiologists warning on the saturated fat content projected in some keto version that can cause concern for heart disease. Points that make it not so surprising as to why this diet could be a risk.
If you are wondering how a low-carb diet could be seen so badly, it has a lot to do with where carbs come from. For instance, if you are looking at only consuming 10% of carbs, then many fruit and vegetable options are going to begin to be out of the question. Along with whole grains and even legumes. You could potentially be losing out on many important vitamins and minerals our body needs, including fibre which we often use to stay regular.
Instead, the keto diet looks at meat and seafood, cheese and dairy options, high fat and low carb veggies like avocado, mushroom, cucumber, cauliflower and green beans, etc. butter and ghee, berries and nuts and seeds. Which seems to be the combination we may want to steer clear of.
At the top of the list was the Mediterranean diet.
