Research
Macro partitioning
High-protein diets significantly increase HDL cholesterol compared to low-protein diets, but only when studies involving Type 2 Diabetics are excluded.
If you do not have Type 2 Diabetes, a high-protein diet might slightly improve your HDL cholesterol, but this may be due to the specific fat composition of the diet rather than the protein itself.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
exclusion of studies with diabetic subjects resulted in an additional benefit of high-protein diets with respect to a more marked increase in HDL-cholesterol.
Why this rating
Significant in sensitivity analysis but not in the primary analysis.
Source
Long-term effects of low-fat diets either low or high in protein on cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Lukas Schwingshackl et al. · Nutrition Journal · 2013
DOI 10.1186/1475-2891-12-48
Meta-analysis · 15 studiesCited 180×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Long-term high-protein diets (≥25% energy) do not provide superior weight loss, fat loss, or cardiovascular risk reduction compared to low-protein diets when both are low-fat.Good
- Long-term high-protein diets significantly improve fasting insulin levels compared to low-protein diets, but this benefit disappears when only high-quality studies are analyzed.Moderate
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