For appetite control, a low-fat, plant-based diet has advantages over a low-carbohydrate, animal-based ketogenic diet, although the keto diet wins when it comes to keeping post-meal glucose and insulin levels in check, new research suggests.
In a highly controlled crossover study conducted at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), people consumed fewer daily calories when on a low-fat, plant-based diet, but their insulin and blood glucose levels were higher than when they followed a low-carbohydrate, animal-based diet.
"There is this somewhat outdated idea now that higher-fat diets, because they have more calories per gram, tend to make people overeat ― something called the passive overconsumption model," senior investigator Kevin Hall, PhD, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), told Medscape Medical News.
The other more popular model these days, he explained, is the carbohydrate-insulin model, which holds that following a diet high in carbohydrates and sugar that causes insulin levels to spike will increase hunger and cause a person to overeat.
In this study, Hall and colleagues tested these two hypotheses head to head.
"The short answer is that we got exactly the opposite predictions from the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity. In other words, instead of making people eat more and gaining weight and body fat, they actually ended up eating less on that diet and losing body fat compared to the higher-fat diet," Hall said.
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