Low-carbohydrate diets: nutritional and physiological aspects.

Title
Low-carbohydrate diets: nutritional and physiological aspects.

Source
Obesity Reviews. 7, (1): 49-58, 2006.

Recently, diets low in carbohydrate content have become a matter of international attention because of WHO recommendations to reduce the overall consumption of sugars and rapidly digestible starches. In this paper, nutritional and physiological effects of low carbohydrate diets are discussed. Low carbohydrate diets acutely induce a number of favourable effects, such as a rapid wt. loss, decrease of fasting glucose and insulin levels, reduction of circulating triglyceride levels and improvement of blood pressure. However, some less desirable immediate effects such as enhanced lean body mass loss, increased urinary Ca loss, increased plasma homocysteine levels, increased low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol also occur.

The long-term effect of the combination of these changes is at present not known. Undesirable effects of low carbohydrate, high fat diets may be counteracted with consumption of a low carbohydrate, high protein, low fat diet, because this type of diet has been shown to induce favourable effects on feelings of satiety and hunger, help preserve lean body mass, effectively reduce fat mass and beneficially impact on insulin sensitivity and on blood lipid status while supplying sufficient Ca for bone mass maintenance. The latter findings support the need for more research on this type of hypocaloric, low carbohydrate diet.