Eating too few carbohydrates can be life-threatening in the long term.
This is what American and Chinese researchers have concluded in a large study published in the medical journal Journal of internal medicine.
The researchers have followed over 370,000 Americans aged 50-71, for an average of 23.5 years, to investigate how eating habits affect health in the longer term.
The results show that those who ate a diet with good carbohydrates such as whole grains and legumes had a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and premature death than those who, for example, ate more fat instead.
– The eating pattern that is dangerous is if you remove the low-carbohydrate diet, says Mai-Lis Hellenius, who is a professor of cardiovascular prevention at the Karolinska Institutet.
Fills more than half the plate
Diets such as LCHF with a lot of fat but little carbohydrates may work if you want to lose weight in the short term – but in the longer term, the diet can be downright dangerous.
– Even if you lose weight, it can be dangerous in the long run, as this large survey shows.
If you eat low carbohydrates, you can fill more than half of your plate – around 55 percent, according to Mai-Lis Hellenius. You shouldn’t be afraid of pasta and potatoes either.
– Pasta can be really good food, but there is a difference between pasta and pasta. Of course, there are instant macaroni, which is a fairly quick carbohydrate, but there is also pasta with a high content of protein and fiber, and it is good food that does not cause high blood sugar and that provides long-lasting satiety, she says.