SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

This is not a photo of the "ketogenic diet" meals the subjects were served in exactly 2 out of 24 months of the study... and the supple-ments they were taking to make up for nutrional deficits are also missin' There are two reasons why the number of studies on the long-term effects of ketogenic diets on health and body composition is still limited. The obvious reason is that it takes time to conduct these studies. This is yet not the full truth, though. After all, conducting a "low fat"-diet study will also take time and we have hundreds of long-term studies, here. Unfortunately, this is where reason #2 comes into play: Not too long ago you would probably have had problems to get funding and/or to even get past the ethics committee of your institution with a study in which overweight or obese subjects were supposed to be exposed to a "high fat" and or "high protein" diet that could "jeopardize their health". You know,  high...

Not basing both the ketogenic and regular very low calorie diet on whole foods, only was only one of at least 3 problems with the study at hand that can thus not be considered the ultimate litmus test to compare VLCD with en vogue VLCKD diets. Ketogenic diets are characterized by constantly low insulin levels. That's not exactly what has been considered muscle protective in the old age of bodybuilding, where insulin's protein-anabolic and anti-catabolic effects were still hailed as a benefit you wouldn't want to miss (Fulks. 1975; Woolfson. 1979), but according to a recent study from Rome, a ketogenic diet may be the go-to diet for everyone trying to shed as much as weight as possible in as little time as possible by cutting your total daily energy intake down to a hilarious <700 kcal/day (Metta. 2016). Now, cutting calories back that much may sound (and be) idiotic for someone who has been lean all his / her life and is just trying to make his abs more visible. Fo...