Tag Archives: diet

Is chocolate healthy? The depends on what you mean by chocolate. And what you mean by healthy.

Posted on February 9, 2015 | 1 comment

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, you may be planning to get something sweet for someone special. Traditionally, this typically includes a box of chocolates. While candy isn’t really a healthy option, eating certain types of chocolate has been linked to some health benefits.

The idea that chocolate may be healthy is no doubt welcome news for chocoholics. But it may leave you wondering if eating chocolate really is healthy. The answer depends on what you mean by chocolate and what you mean by healthy.

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First, it is worth understanding what it is about chocolate that may promote health. The health benefits of chocolate have to do with the fact that it comes from a plant, the cacao tree. Like many plant-based foods including fruits and vegetables, chocolate contains phytochemicals, plant-derived compounds that have health benefits. Indeed, chocolate does contain antioxidant flavonoids that have been shown to affect a variety of physiological systems. These flavonoids are also found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables as well as coffee, tea, and wine. The beneficial effects include dilation of blood vessels, improved blood clotting, and reduced inflammation, all of which can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases including heart attack and stroke. Additionally, these flavonoids may lower blood pressure, regulate insulin levels, and reduce stress.

The chocolate that we eat contains two main components from the cacao plant, cocoa and cocoa butter, in addition to added sugar and other ingredients. Cocoa is the non-fat component of the cocoa bean and cocoa butter is mostly fat. The flavonoids are found in the cocoa, so chocolate that is richer in cocoa, like dark chocolate, contains more of these beneficial compounds. For example, dark chocolate may contain 70% cocoa, compared to 25% cocoa in milk chocolate. These flavonoids also give dark (sometimes called semi-sweet) chocolate more of a bitter flavor than milk or white chocolate. This is also because dark chocolate may contain less sugar than milk chocolate, but this isn’t always true.

Milk chocolate contains more of the cacao butter along with other additives, usually milk. White chocolate is made exclusively from the cocoa butter and contains no cocoa, so none of the beneficial phytochemicals. Even though the fat in cocoa butter is mostly healthier monounsaturated and saturated fats, it still contains calories. Sugar, milk, and other ingredients also add calories, so chocolate is certainly something to enjoy in moderation.

One thing to keep in mind is that some of the research into the health benefits of chocolate was conducted in animals, not humans. And some of the research in humans used isolated extracts from the cacao plant, not chocolate. And when subjects were given chocolate it was dark chocolate that is high in cacao. The point is that the evidence for chocolate being healthy was not based on eating more Hershey’s bars!

But given the potential benefits, eating dark chocolate instead of other sweets such as cakes, cookies, and other candy is probably a good idea. Simply eating more chocolate in addition to other sweets will not make you any healthier, and the extra calories could lead to weight gain. Look for chocolate that contains at least 70% cocoa (sometimes listed on the label as cacao or cocoa solids) and remember that a small amount is enough.

Also keep in mind that many fruits contain the same antioxidants as chocolate, so a serving of berries, for example, is a better choice. And finally, achieving good health requires more than simply changing one aspect of what you eat, so include dark chocolate as a part of a diet that includes real food balanced by daily physical activity.

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Eat slow, then fast. How and when you eat may be as important as what you eat for weight control.

Posted on February 2, 2015 | 1 comment

What you eat is an essential part of achieving and maintaining good health. What you may not know is that when and how you eat can be just as important. This is especially true if your goal is to lose weight.

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week describes  two ways that changing the way you eat can help you lose weight and keep it off. Neither of these are necessarily new ideas, but implementing them together may help you eat less.

First, eating more slowly can help you limit the amount of food you eat. Perhaps your mother admonished you to “slow down” at meals when you were young. This was good advice, for both practical and physiological reasons. In addition to controlling how much food you consume, eating more slowly is a good way to enjoy meals, both the food and the company, more fully.

You mother may also have told you to “chew your food.” too. This was probably to remind you to eat more slowly.  Almost 100 years ago Horace Fletcher recommended a process that involved chewing each bite of food 100 times. “Fletcherizing,” as it was called, was a way to reduce how much people ate, among other more dubious health claims.

There is a physiological reason to slow down, too. Your appetite is regulated by a host of factors, including the act of eating and the presence of food in your stomach. As you eat, your stomach fills. This triggers the release of hormones that signal your brain to reduce your appetite. The result is that as your stomach fills, you feel less hungry.

Once you start eating, it takes time for your stomach to release these hormones. Eating quickly, like many of us do, allows you to take in lots of calories before your brain gets the message that you are full. This is one factor that leads to overeating. But if you slow down at meals, you start to feel full before you eat as much. Research shows that this can lead to lower calorie intake during the meal.

Second, the time between meals may affect your metabolism in ways that result in less fat accumulation. Again, the concept of fasting between meals isn’t new, but recent research helps explain why eating less frequently may help prevent obesity and related conditions, including diabetes.

While this research was done using rats, the physiological concept may well apply to humans. In these studies, rats were put on a diet that included an overnight fast ranging from 8–12 hours. The researchers found that the rats that experienced a longer fasting period between meals had better insulin levels and less fat storage.

The reason for this seems to do with the gut microbiome, the bacteria that live in the intestine and play an important role in regulating metabolism. A longer period without food changes the nature of these good bacteria, promoting these benefits.

I first heard about this on Science Friday, which provides an excellent summary of this research.

It is unclear whether this same effect occurs in humans. Even without this evidence, adopting a fasting period between dinner and breakfast, which should be about 12 hours, seems prudent. At the very least, it will keep you from snacking in the evening, which almost certainly involves unhealthy choices.

An additional finding of this research is that the benefits of the 12-hour fast seem to persist, even through a day or two of more frequent eating. This is relevant, since many people do well to modify their eating habits during the week, but tend toward less restrained eating on the weekends. The fact that the benefits of an overnight fast most days of the week are maintained despite a “wild weekend” is good news!

The combination of what, when, and how you eat can make an important difference in how much you eat, the key to losing weight and keeping it off. As you try to make healthier food choices, consider eating more slowly and making dinner the end of your eating day.

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It’s about time.

Posted on January 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week is about time—why dedicating adequate time is essential for exercise and weight loss success and suggestions for how to spend your time to achieve health and fitness goals.

Improving your health through diet, exercise, and weight loss takes motivation and dedication. It also takes time. This includes time to learn about what you should (and shouldn’t) do as well as the time needed to modify these health habits. For many, the problem isn’t knowing what to do or how to get started, it is finding the time to stick with the program. In fact, the number one reason why people abandon their diet and exercise routine is lack of time.

Given that most people are busy—maybe too busy—with work, family, and other responsibilities, finding time to focus on health isn’t easy. But it is important, so the first step should be dedicating your time wisely to meet your goals. This involves time for planning, taking action, and monitoring your progress. In short, you should treat your diet or exercise program like a project, rather than an “extra” activity.

This idea is supported by behavior change research, workplace productivity programs, and the practical experience of real people who have gone through this process. Here are a few suggestions to help you dedicate the time you need to achieve your health and fitness goals.

Before you begin. Any health behavior change should begin with identifying what you want to change, setting realistic goals, and determining what information, resources, and support you will need. For example, if you want to lose weight you should have a goal weight and timeline in mind. You should also set both short-term (weekly) and long-term (monthly or longer) goals.

This is also a good time to determine when and how you will put your plan into action. If you need information about what to eat or decide to join a gym to exercise, put those components in place now. Looking at your calendar and scheduling time for preparing meals and daily exercise or making a weekly menu of meals and a grocery list before you go to the store are good ways to invest your time.

Getting started. Once you have yourself organized, it is time to begin! Hopefully, this is a bit easier since you planned ahead, but keep in mind that you will continually need to revisit and modify your plan. This is important because a major reason why people don’t succeed is that they don’t allow flexibility in their plan. Once things go awry, they give up. The key is to keep moving forward, even if the progress is slow.

Keeping track of your weight or a record of what you eat or what you do for exercise is a simple way to monitor your progress. Linking progress to rewards is important for keeping you motivated, but make sure the rewards are consistent with your goals.

Sticking with it. While starting a diet or exercise program can be challenging, it is also exciting and seeing progress can be motivating. The trick is to maintain that progress over time, especially when you aren’t seeing such big improvements. Knowing that things will not always go as planned can help you avoid a bad day or week from ruining your success. This is why dedicating time to thinking about “what if” scenarios and coming up with back-up plans is essential.

 

The secret to lasting weight loss or maintaining an exercise program isn’t so much the details of the program but spending the time to plan, get off to a good start, and maintain the changes you decide to make. In the end, it’s about the time you dedicate to developing healthy habits.

 

 

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The five pillars of good health

Posted on January 12, 2015 | 2 comments

What does it really take to live a healthy lifestyle? This is the topic of me Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week.

Confusing and conflicting information can make improving your health especially challenging. Some advice is straightforward—quit smoking, for example. But other recommendations, especially those regarding nutrition and exercise, are less clear. In an effort to stay focused on the “big picture” I have created what I call the Five Pillars of Good Health. These are five habits that are the basis for achieving and maintaining good health.

Don’t Smoke.

Smoking doubles your risk of heart attack and stroke and is the leading cause of lung cancer. Second-hand smoke can affect the health of others, so these risks are not limited to the smoker.

If you smoke, quit now…no excuses! Newer prescription medications and over-the-counter nicotine replacement products can help, but quitting will require dedication, effort, and support.

Eat Smart.

Good nutrition is essential for preventing and treating most chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Perhaps the best way to cut through the conflicting nutrition information and diet claims is to simplify healthy eating to it’s most basic form: Eat real food, not processed “food.”

This isn’t easy, of course. One sure way to make better choices is to limit added sugars and salt, which are almost always present in processed foods. Strive to eat more whole fruits and fruit juices, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (like beans), lean meat, dairy, and nuts. If weight loss is a goal for you, reducing portion sizes will absolutely help you cut calories.

Move More.

This is a three-step process. First, sit less. Limit sedentary time at work and home and make opportunities to get up and move. The health effects of prolonged sitting are similar to not exercising. If you find yourself in stuck a chair for an hour, at least get up and stretch for a minute.

Second, move more. Look for ways to add activity to your everyday routine. This can include yard work and house work as well as using the stairs and parking further away in parking lots. Every additional step counts!

Third, dedicate time to be active every day. This can include activity such as taking the dog for walk as well as more structured exercise that includes endurance, resistance, and flexibility training. Strive for 30 minutes per day, but know that more is better.

Chill Out.

Chronic stress can have a powerful effect on your health. While it is not possible to eliminate all stress from your life, you should dedicate yourself to identifying and modifying sources of stress at work and home and learning to control your stress response.

Much of the stress of life comes down to not having enough time. Good time management, planning carefully, and setting priorities will certainly help reduce both long and short-term stress. You should also know that inadequate sleep adds to the health effects of stress, so strive to get enough sleep.

Make It Work For You.

This is the tricky part—how to actually make these changes. The first step is to make good health a priority and dedicate time and energy to your efforts. No doubt you have tried some of these changes before, you probably have an idea of what does and doesn’t work for you. Try something different this time around. The support of others is essential, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. Get your friends and family involved, too. They will certainly benefit from joining you on your journey toward better health.

 

 

 

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Not sure where to begin to improve your health? A guide to taking the first step

Posted on December 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

If you are thinking about losing weight, becoming more active, or quitting smoking you are not alone. These are three of the most common health-related New Year’s resolutions. Considering that two-thirds of American adults are overweight, about half don’t meet minimum recommendations for physical activity, and one in five smoke, there are many people who need to change more than one of these behaviors.

Quitting smoking and changing eating and exercise habits to lose weight or improve fitness are among the most difficult behavior changes to make, especially at the same time. Some people focus on one change to begin with.

Obviously, changing all three of these behaviors is ideal, but if you are only willing to change one, which should you take on first to have the biggest impact on your overall health? This is the topic of my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week.

You might think that quitting smoking would be the most important change to make initially. Smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking also increases the risk of most other cancers and is a major contributor to heart attacks and strokes. Quitting smoking greatly reduces these risks with beneficial changes that begin within days of quitting. Despite this, if you only want to change one behavior, smoking isn’t the place to start.

Being overweight is a leading cause of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and some cancers. If you are overweight, losing just 10% of your body weight (20 lbs. for a 200 lb. person) can significantly reduce the severity of these conditions. Maintaining a healthy body weight can prevent many of these health problems. However, losing weight is not the first change you should make.

It turns out that becoming physically active is the most important change you can make to improve your overall health. Decades of research show that regular physical activity reduces the risk of most chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers and can extend the lifespan by up to five years. In fact, the health risks of inactivity are equal to or greater than that of obesity or smoking. Regular activity also improves muscular strength, aerobic fitness, bone density, cognitive function, and memory. There is no other single intervention—drugs included—that has as many health benefits.

Research also shows that the negative health effects of being overweight and obesity are, in part, caused by inactivity and poor fitness. If you are overweight but physically fit, your risk of death is lower than if you are at a “healthy” weight but unfit. Regular exercise can reduce the risk of diabetes in people who are overweight, whether they lose weight or not. Furthermore, studies of “successful losers” show that daily exercise is a requirement for long-term weight loss, so becoming active now can help you lose weight later.

You should change all three of these behaviors to achieve optimal health. But if you are looking for an initial step that will have the biggest impact, start by becoming more active. A good initial goal is to reduce the time you spend being sedentary (sitting) and to get a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, such as a brisk walk, each day. You can get greater benefits by participating in more intense exercise, including strength training, three or more days per week. And once you have established a routine of regular activity you will be ready to make other health changes.

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Take a lesson in healthy eating from your turkey this Thanksgiving.

Posted on November 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week is about Thanksgiving dinner. With all the talk about how to make it a “healthier” meal by replacing traditional dishes and modifying recipes, I think we may be missing an important lesson in healthy eating.

This is Thanksgiving week, and people throughout the country are planning a feast including traditional dishes and family favorites. Even though many of these are not the healthiest choices, they make an appearance on the dinner table each year. Combined with the common occurrence of over-indulging, Thanksgiving dinner can represent a day of poor nutrition choices.

In an effort to make Thanksgiving dinner healthier, recommendations for modifying or replacing traditional dishes are a common theme in magazines, on the morning TV shows, and on the web. While these suggestions are meant to be helpful, I’m not sure they actually serve to make a significant impact on health.

After all, Thanksgiving is one day, and if there was ever a day to give yourself license to indulge, this is it! Of course, trying new foods and cooking techniques is always good, but the impact of replacing the butter in your mashed potatoes with fat-free sour cream or taking the marshmallow topping off Granny’s famous sweet potato dish isn’t realistically going to make you any healthier in the long run.

The truth is that if you eat a healthy diet every day, or even most days, and you have an active lifestyle you can get away with a day—or weekend—of overeating. (Obviously, you should always follow dietary restrictions for any medical conditions you have.) The problem comes when Thanksgiving dinner is yet another unhealthy meal in addition to the others that week or month.

Some of these recommendations are worth trying, for sure. Making an alternative to a traditional dish can get your family to try new foods they might not otherwise consider. And cooking using different ingredients or techniques on Thanksgiving can give you ideas for other meals, too.

However, focusing on modifying your Thanksgiving dinner may distract you from appreciating the greatest potential health benefit of this meal. Given the current confusion about how much and what type of carbohydrates and fats we should eat, there is an increased push to get us to eat less processed food and more real food.

For many of us, Thanksgiving dinner is one of the only times we cook and eat real food. A real turkey, vegetables, and home-made dessert are a huge improvement over the processed foods most of us eat on a daily basis. While we eat turkey at other times, it is almost always in a processed form such as ground turkey or deli meat, which frequently includes other additives. Cooking and eating a whole turkey is, for most families, relatively rare. So is eating a meal that doesn’t come from a restaurant or is heated in a microwave.

Additionally, Thanksgiving dinner is shared simultaneously around a common table (and maybe a kids’ table, too). All too often, meals are consumed away from the family table, frequently at different times. The benefits of eating together as a family are well-known, and can impact nutrition, psychological well-being, and health in general. Maybe Thanksgiving dinner isn’t about the food as much as it is the company. Why not make this a habit at other meals?

This week, let’s all give thanks for family, friends, and a shared meal. Let’s also take a lesson from the day and try to prepare and eat more real food as a family. This may be the biggest benefit of Thanksgiving. That, and a second serving of pumpkin pie!

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Celebrate Food Day every day by eating real food

Posted on October 20, 2014 | 4 comments

This Friday is Food Day, an annual event that aims to raise awareness about the food we eat and the impact it has on our health, environment, and quality of life. It turns out that many of us don’t know much about our food including where it came from, the method of preparation, and the quality and nutritional value.

As I describe in my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week, we are increasingly disconnected from our food, a fact that has implications for our health and the health of the environment.

Our lack of knowledge about the food we eat has been replaced by a heightened awareness about nutrients. In fact, many people follow diets that either emphasize or restrict certain nutrients in order to obtain health benefits. But the research to support the importance of these individual nutrients is often mixed or lacking altogether. Still, as we seek out sources of these nutrients we are led to supplements, such as fish oil, or processed foods with added nutrients, like fiber.

To be sure, fish oil and fiber are good for us. But does that mean that taking a fish oil supplement will have the same health benefits as actually eating fish instead of, say, fried chicken? Or is adding fiber to a chocolate breakfast bar equivalent to getting more fiber from fruits and vegetables? Both research and common sense suggest that the answer is no.

Beyond the individual nutrients, the food we eat has changed. Even the way food gets to our table has changed. Since nearly half of our meals are eaten outside the home, it’s not even “our” table anymore. And when we do eat at home, take-out and prepackaged heat-and-eat meals have become the norm. In fact, the idea of cooking meals from ingredients is so foreign that we have to be reminded about how and why we should do it.

Events like Food Day are an attempt to get us back to the basics of cooking and eating real food. This, of course, is how people ate for years before the obesity and diabetes epidemics we are dealing with now, so eating real food again is a step toward reducing these, and other, health problems.

In addition to the potential health benefits of focusing on food over nutrients, this approach is also good for the environment and the economy. It turns out that eating healthier food promotes sustainable agriculture and can support local farmers. Locally grown produce, which is picked at the peak of freshness, can be more nutritious and have a lower environmental impact than food from factory farms which is often shipped great distances. And most important, food from local farms usually tastes better!

This is the point of Food Day. We should make ourselves aware of where our food comes from and do our best to eat “real food” as opposed to processed and pre-packaged foods that tend to be high in calories, added sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. When possible, we should buy foods that are grown locally to minimize the environmental impact and support local farmers who live, work, and pay taxes in our area.

It turns out that focusing on food, not nutrients, will have a positive impact on your health, the environment, and quality of life for you and others. And that is why it is called Food Day, not nutrient day. You can learn more about how you can celebrate Food Day every day at www.foodday.org.

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Don’t forget about breast cancer prevention!

Posted on October 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and many local and national organizations are promoting breast cancer awareness, sharing information about the disease, and celebrating survivors. This month represents the most visible part of a year-round effort to educate about, screen for, and hopefully cure this devastating disease.

Of course, these are all worthy goals that deserve our attention and support. What is often missing are the steps women—especially young women—can take to reduce their risk for, or even prevent, breast cancer.

Approximately 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that around 300,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed and nearly 40,000 women die from this disease each year. Breast cancer can occur in men, but these cases are rare, so the focus is rightfully on women.

Much attention is given to genetic factors that increase the risk of breast cancer. These include certain gene mutations, including BRCA1 and BRCA2, as well as family history. A woman who has a first-degree relative (mother, sister, or daughter) who has had breast cancer has nearly twice the risk of being diagnosed herself.

Considering that most women diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history, it is also important to try to reduce other modifiable risk factors. This involves making health behavior changes that are probably familiar to most people. The good news is that these changes can also reduce the risk of other cancers, cardiovascular disease, and most other chronic diseases.

Avoid tobacco use. While the results of studies of smoking and breast cancer are mixed, a conservative interpretation is that smoking may increase the risk. Smoking increases the risk of other cancers, especially lung cancer, as well as heart attack, stroke, and other lung diseases. Not smoking, or quitting now, is among the best health decisions a woman can make.

Consume alcohol in moderation. Women should limit their alcohol intake to one drink per day. Women who consume more than two drinks per day increase their risk of breast cancer by 20% over women who don’t drink.

Maintain a healthy body weight. Being overweight can increase the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women by 30–60%. Excess body fat can alter the levels of estrogen and other hormones. The good news is that losing as little as 10 pounds can reduce this risk.

Be physically active everyday. Regular activity and exercise can lower breast cancer risk by as much as 20%. In addition to helping with weight control, physical activity may lower the level of certain hormones that are associated with breast cancer. The biggest reduction in risk of breast cancer is seen in women who have been active their whole lives, but it is never too late to start.

Eat a healthy diet. The evidence from studies on the effect of diet on breast cancer risk is mixed, and more research is needed. In general, increasing fruit, vegetable, and whole grain intake and reducing red meat is associated with at least some decrease in breast cancer risk. These “healthy” foods are rich in vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients and eating more of these foods may lead to weight loss or prevent weight gain with age.

Every woman has a different breast cancer risk based on her unique family history, biology, and lifestyle. But by making some simple health behavior changes, all women can reduce their risk for, or even prevent, breast cancer and improve their overall health.

 

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When it comes to your health, don’t take the high road.

Posted on October 6, 2014 | 1 comment

When faced with challenging moral or ethical situations we are advised to do what is right, even if it is more difficult. “Taking the high road” is often synonymous with living a better life. When it comes to your health, though, taking the high road may lead you on a path to chronic disease, disability, and early death.

The high road I am referring to in this case has nothing to do with ethical decisions. It has to do with test results, specifically measurements your doctor makes of your weight and blood pressure as well as blood tests of cholesterol and glucose. This is the topic of my Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week.

These tests are indicators of your current health as well as risks to your health in the future. The results of these measures are used to classify you as having “normal” or “high” blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood cholesterol. For example, a fasting blood glucose between 70–100 mg/dl is normal but you are considered to have diabetes if your result is 126 mg/dl or higher.

Even if your blood glucose is above normal (100–125 mg/dl) but isn’t high enough for you to be classified as diabetic, it may still be too high. This condition is called prediabetes because without intervention most people in this category will eventually develop diabetes.

Considering that diabetes is a leading cause of heart attacks, blindness, and amputations, preventing your blood glucose from increasing should be a high priority.

The same is true for other measurements including blood pressure and body mass index (BMI), the most common assessment of obesity. Even if you aren’t considered obese or don’t have hypertension, the higher your BMI or blood pressure becomes puts you at increased risk of the condition getting worse over time or leading to other more serious health problems.

In fact, even within the normal range, a higher value is associated with increased health risks. Take blood cholesterol for example, where the risk of heart disease increases at total cholesterol levels above 150 mg/dl, well within the “normal” range of less than 200 mg/dl. At even higher levels, total cholesterol is associated with a much greater risk.

Clearly, having a high BMI, blood pressure, blood glucose, or cholesterol is concerning. But it is important not to be fooled into thinking that a value that is technically below the diagnostic criteria for “abnormal” is necessarily “normal.” For many, even slightly elevated levels of these variables now are likely to get worse over time.

The good news is that modest lifestyle changes including weight loss, regular moderate physical activity, and changes to what you eat can prevent conditions like prediabetes and prehypertension from getting worse. This can be achieved through losing as little as 10 pounds, walking or doing other activity for 30 minutes per day, and adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet.

To be sure, taking the “high road” with BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose, even if your test results are within the normal range, can put you at increased health risk. For these conditions, you are far better off taking the low road and making the necessary lifestyle changes to stay there.

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Fat still matters

Posted on September 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about some recent research suggesting that low-carbohydrate diets may be better for weight loss that low-fat diets. For many, this study reinforced the notion that traditional recommendations are wrong and that the key to good health is to eliminate carbohydrates from your diet. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The recent study did show that people lost more weight and experienced beneficial changes in blood lipids when they followed a low-carbohydrate diet compared to those who ate a low-fat diet. However, this does not mean that low-fat diets aren’t effective for weight loss or that they are “unhealthy.”

In fact, low-fat diets have long been used effectively to promote weight loss, reduce heart disease risk, and lead to healthier eating in general. This is supported by the results of hundreds of research studies as well as the practical experience of health professionals and real people. Here are two reasons why fat still matters when it comes to health.

First, reduced-fat diets have been shown to improve blood cholesterol and lower the risk for heart disease. Eating a diet low in fat, especially saturated and trans fat, has been the foundation of nutrition recommendations for decades. The fact is that these diets are effective for weight loss, reducing cholesterol, and otherwise improving heart health.

One famous study demonstrated that following a low-fat diet contributed to a reduction in the severity of atherosclerosis, the narrowing of arteries that leads to many heart attacks. Literally hundreds of other studies have shown similar beneficial results.

This isn’t some magical effect of eating less fat, though. The health benefits are likely due to eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains as much as they are to reducing fat intake. The point is that adopting a low-fat diet can lead to better nutrition overall.

Second, reducing fat intake is a good way to reduce calories. This is true because fat contains nine calories per gram, more than twice that of carbohydrates and protein, so cutting fat is an effective way to cut calories. Limiting fat intake also reduces calories indirectly because many high fat foods are also high in sugar and calories (think of most desserts).

It is important to mention that simply reducing fat intake won’t always lead to weight loss; total calories must be lower, too. This is a mistake many make when they reduce fat intake, but increase the amount of calories from other sources, typically carbohydrates. Many low-fat foods are actually relatively high in calories due to added sugar or people tend to eat more of them (the SnackWell Effect).

The effectiveness of low-fat diets for weight loss has been demonstrated in research studies (like this one) and countless weight loss programs. In one notable study, a diet low in fat even led to weight loss in people who weren’t trying to lose weight. And don’t forget that in the recent study about low-carbohydrate diets, the subjects that followed the low-fat diet also lost weight.

For some people, cutting carbohydrates as a way to lose weight is reasonable; for others, reducing fat intake makes sense. For most people, though, doing both to some extent is the best option, but going to extremes is unnecessary.

Eating less added sugar and avoiding foods with added fats (such as French fries) are good recommendations for almost everyone. That said, there is little evidence for the benefit of limiting carbohydrates in the form of whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits or the fat in meat and dairy.

The bottom line is that the quality of food we eat is more important than the specific amounts of the nutrients it contains. Eating low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets can help steer you toward making healthier choices, but so can avoiding processed foods in favor of wholesome, nutrient-dense “real” food.

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