Coalition wants ‘low-carb’ diet added to nutrition guidelines

The Low-Carb Action Network (LCAN), a new coalition of doctors, academics and other Americans with personal success stories about using low-carb diets, is urging nutrition leaders to include a true low-carb diet in the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

LCAN members point to a large and rapidly growing body of scientific research showing carbohydrate restriction to be a safe and effective strategy to prevent and even reverse chronic, diet-related conditions such as pre-diabetes/type 2 diabetes, overweight/obesity and high blood pressure, along with an array of other cardiovascular risk factors, a news release states.

The American Diabetes Association recently endorsed low-carb/keto diets as a standard of care for the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes, stating that the diet lowers blood pressure, controls blood sugar, lowers triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood), raises the “good” cholesterol (HDL-C) and reduces the need for medication use.

The Dietary Guidelines, however, do not include a low-carb diet.

LCAN members are concerned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in its current scientific reviews, is using an inaccurate definition of the diet that is not up-to-date with science and will lead to misleading, untrustworthy results. Specifically, USDA is defining “low-carb” as 45 percent of total calories or less, when leaders in the field agree this number should be 25 percent.

Dr. Eric Westman, associate professor of medicine at Duke University, emphasizes that the current dietary guidelines do not apply to most Americans and that a variety of dietary options should be presented to the American people, including a low-carbohydrate diet.

“One size does not fit all. If there is anything we’ve learned over the last four years, it’s that the low-carb approach should be a viable option,” Dr. Westman states in the release.

Dr. Mark Cucuzzella, professor of family medicine at West Virginia University, says a majority of the patients he treats daily have obesity and “metabolic syndrome,” a combination of conditions driven by hyperinsulinemia that increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

“If the government has any responsibility to give advice on nutrition, it should be focused on those who have a medical condition which is impacted by nutrition and provide evidence-based nutrition solutions, one being a low-carb diet,” he says. “This diet is highly effective to prevent and treat diet-related illnesses and has decades of evidence to support it.”

Dr. Nadir Ali, chairman of the Department of Cardiology at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center and research professor in the Department of Nutrition and Applied Science at the University of Houston, has significant experience in the science and practice of low-carb diets.

“As a cardiologist, I regularly prescribe a low-carb diet to treat patients with type 2 diabetes and other heart-related diseases to better their health and improve their quality of life,” Dr. Ali says. “Given the significant amount of scientific research and evidence supporting this diet, it’s time for U.S. nutrition policy leaders to prescribe a low-carb option for those who are tipping into obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and more.”

A study conducted last year by the University of North Carolina concluded that only 12 percent of American adults are metabolically healthy, while 88 percent are en route to developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease or another chronic, diet-related condition, the release states.

Doug Reynolds, the founder of Low Carb USA, a group that hosts scientific conferences on the subject, says that more than 70 clinical trials show clear results: low-carb diets are effective in combating obesity and improving cardiovascular risk factors.

USDA and Health and Human Services officials have defined “low-carb” inaccurately for their scientific reviews, according to Dr. Charles Cavo, co-founder and chief medical officer of Pounds Transformation in Connecticut.

“If USDA and HHS continue to wrongfully define low-carb diets, they will skew the results of their analyses,” he says in the release. “Defining ‘low-carb’ as 45 percent of calories will wash out any positive results, which are largely achieved only when people significantly reduce carbohydrates, down to 25 percent of calories or less. It’s not clear why USDA chose their definition of low-carb, since the agency provided no documentation or footnotes. But it’s clearly not consistent with leading research in the field or what we see working for weight loss and disease reversal in clinical practice.”

LCAN plans to launch a grass-roots campaign in the coming months to urge leaders at the USDA and HHS to include a properly defined low-carb diet in the Dietary Guidelines. The next meeting of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will be held in January in Houston. For more information on the Low-Carb Action Network, visit lowcarbaction.org.