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Comment & Response
July 10, 2018

Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate Diets and Weight Loss

Author Affiliations
  • 1Adult and Family Medicine, Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, Mclean, Virginia
JAMA. 2018;320(2):202. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.6240

To the Editor In the Diet Intervention Examining The Factors Interacting with Treatment Success (DIETFITS) randomized clinical trial, the investigators concluded that there was no significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate diet.1 At baseline, both groups consumed a comparable percentage of daily calories from fat: 34.8% for the low-fat group and 36.0% for the low-carbohydrate group. At the conclusion of the 12-month study period, the percentage of daily calories from fat was 28.7% in the low-fat group and 44.6% in the low-carbohydrate group. Although the percentage of daily calories from fat was reduced from 34.8% to 28.7% in the low-fat group, a diet composed of 28.7% of the daily calories from fat is a high-fat diet.

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