唔使驚食飯，亦都唔好癲咗咁淨係高脂肪嘅食物啦！均衡飲食呀嘛你知㗎👐🏻！
😲EATING CARBS WILL KILL YOU?🤔
💥There’s been lots of sensational headlines around a new study that was released this week 😱 So we thought we’d do a quick summary.
🔎For a more thorough breakdown we’d recommend the reviews by Dr Joanna McMillan & Nutrition Wonk (linked below)
⭐️WHAT WAS THE STUDY?⭐️
🔬The research (called the PURE study), looked at the diets of 135,335 people in 18 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and America.
🍏Researchers looked at what people ate & followed them for ~7 years. They recorded who died (& why), as well as who had a cardiovascular event (like a heart attack/stroke).
❤️They then used their data on peoples diets to find out if there was any link between the % of macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins) people ate & their risk of dying from heart disease/having a cardiovascular event.
⭐️WHAT DID THEY FIND?⭐️
🍚They found that the people who ate the most carbs (~77% of their diet) had a 28% higher risk of death (from all causes, but not from heart disease).
🥑They also found that the people who ate the most fat (~35% of their diets) had a 23% lower risk of death than people who ate the least fat (~10%).
🍖The type of fat people ate didn’t make a difference to the risk of heart disease or cardio events.
🍗 Low intakes of saturated fat were associated with a higher risk of stroke.
⭐️SOO CARBS ARE BAD AND FATS ARE GOOD?⭐️
✋️Not so fast! There’s a few things in this study which aren’t immediately obvious from the headlines:
1. It was an observational study - this means it can show links and patterns but not cause & effect.
2. The people who ate less than 60% of energy from carbohydrate weren’t at an increased risk of death, this association was only seen at VERY HIGH intakes of carbohydrates, not moderate intakes, as seen in the UK.
3. This study is done predominantly in low & middle income countries and the results may be clouded by poverty. For example, protein & fat in poor countries are usually more expensive than carbs. This means that people who are poorer are likely to eat a lot more carbs and not through choice. Poverty also usually means poorer access to/adequacy of healthcare and diets which don’t meet energy and nutrient requirements. It’s hard to tease this relationship out and so it could affect the results.
4. The high fat diet wasn’t really high fat. In fact the highest fat group ate ~35% fat, which is similar to current UK recommended amounts. The effects at higher intakes of fats weren’t included in the study.
5. This study only looked at different types of fat and not different types of carbohydrate, the predominant source of carbs in Asia being refined white rice, for example.
⭐️WHAT DOES THIS STUDY TELL US?⭐️
👍Overall, this study is an interesting addition to the body of research on fats and carbohydrates.
⚖️Its findings are in line with other research that has indicated that we shouldn’t be afraid of eating a moderate amount of fat (a la med diet), and that we shouldn’t be replacing fats with carbohydrates in our diets.
🤓However, unlike the headlines suggest, it’s not an indication that all carbs are “bad” for us, or a green light to eat bucket loads of fat. It simply supports the notion that diets with moderate amounts of good quality carbs and fats can be healthy.
