While the low-fat diet craze led some doctors to worry that Americans would instead start eating too many carbohydrates, a new study suggests that eating low-fat doesn’t have to increase carbohydrate-fueled health risks.

Team@CMHF

Instead, if extra carbohydrates are part of a diet plan that includes more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, the risk of diabetes – the biggest related health concern — could actually drop, at least in older women, according to the findings.

However, a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet could create problems in people who already have diabetes, researchers caution.
The results suggest that balancing both diabetes and other disease risks requires considering the kinds of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins we eat, researchers said, rather than just cutting back on one food group and eating more of another.

About 900 of the women, selected randomly, were told to decrease their total fat intake so that fat accounted for about 20 percent of the calories in their diet. For a 2,000-calorie diet, that would mean eating 44 grams of fat each day.
As part of the new diet, women were also told to increase the number of fruit, vegetable, and grain servings they ate, and they attended regular sessions with nutritionists to help them do that.

The other 1,400 women, serving as a comparison group, were not given any extra nutritional guidance or told to change their diet.
The researchers followed women for the next 6 years with surveys on diet and exercise and also tested their blood for sugar and insulin levels to look for diabetes or its warning signs.
Women in the low-fat group, on average, said they got between 25 and 29 percent of their calories from fat in follow-up surveys. That compared to 36 to 37 percent in the group without a diet intervention.

Because the research was limited to women age 50 and up, the findings don’t necessarily apply to men or younger women on a low-fat diet.
Jenkins said that getting more fat and protein from vegetable sources, such as by eating beans or adding hummus or peanut butter to bread, is a good way to stave off both diabetes and heart disease.

Ref:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-diet-diabetes-risks-idUSTRE7576R520110608