Low carb vs low fat diet for type 2 diabetes. Episode #348

Contrary to the long held contention that low fat diets are best for people with type 2 diabetes (DM2), the totality of current evidence suggests that low carb diets are at least as effective in ameliorating metabolic health in DM2. In fact, low carb seems to be somewhat better, particularly in the short to medium term, although the evidence is of moderate certainty.   On this week’s episode Prof Hanno Pijl (@HannoPijl) and dr Esther van Zuuren (@Ezzoef) join Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) to discuss the most appropriate diet for people with DM2   Hanno Pijl is an internist-endocrinologist and professor of Diabetology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) In Leiden, The Netherlands. He co-authored over 250 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals, primarily related to obesity and type 2 diabetes. He has been a member of the Dutch Health Council (standing committee on nutrition) from 2008-2016. He currently co-chairs the Dutch Innovation center for Lifestyle Medicine (www.nilg.eu), a joint effort of LUMC and the Dutch Organisation of Applied Science (TNO) focusing on lifestyle interventions in health care.   Esther van Zuuren is a dermatologist at the Leiden University Medical Centre, but apart from that and more relevant for now is that her expertise lies in Evidence Based Medicine. She has been with Cochrane for almost 20 years, has held the position of Key Editor and Methods editor for Cochrane Skin group for several years and conducted over 30 systematic reviews on a wide variety of topics. Furthermore, she is member of the GRADE working group, is a Recommendations Editor for DynaMed Plus (clinical evidence-based reference tool for clinicians) and Associate Editor for Systematic Reviews for the British Journal of Dermatology   In our 20 min conversation we discuss   Efficacy of low fat versus low carb diets in the treatment of type 2 diabetes The method of weighing the certainty of evidence we used in our systematic review of the literature Dietary recommendations for people with type 2 diabetes https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/108/2/300/5051863