Paleo diets = weight gain

The low-carbohydrate Paleo diet that is becoming increasingly popular as a way to lose weight may instead make you fat and even cause symptoms of pre-diabetes, according to new research.

The finding, detailed in a paper in Nature journal Nutrition and Diabetes, has prompted a warning against fad diets which have little or no scientific evidence behind them.

Diabetes researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Medicine, based at the Austin Hospital, Associate Professor Sof Andrikopoulos, was interested to learn whether the Paleo diet could benefit patients with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

His research group took two groups of overweight mice with pre-diabetes symptoms and put one group on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet similar to Paleo diets.The other group remained on their normal diet.

The LCHF mice were switched from a three per cent fat diet to a 60 per cent fat diet while their carbohydrate intake was reduced to only 20 per cent.