August 14, 2019 – Healthiness of High Fat?

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Anchor lead: Should the high fat content of certain diets be a concern? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Eating a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates helped people with mild cognitive impairment improve on tests of cognition, a Johns Hopkins study led by Jason Brandt has shown. Brandt says recruiting participants to the study was quite a challenge.

Brandt: When we talk to people about going on a high fat diet the first reaction that we got was what are you talking about? My doctor has been saying for years that I should go on a low fat diet. The problem with the typical American diet is we eat a lot of fat and we eat a lot of carbohydrates and so the fat gets stored. In our bellies, in our blood vessels, and it causes all the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular problems that a high fat diet causes. But if you keep your carbohydrates very low, you burn fat for fuel. And that’s what we were counting on in this study.  :32

Brandt says motivating dieticians were key to helping study participants initiate and maintain this diet. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.