Research
Macro partitioning
Low-fat diets (LFD) result in greater reductions in Total Cholesterol (TC) and Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol compared to low-carbohydrate diets (LCD) over a duration of 6 to 23 months.
If your primary health concern is high LDL or Total Cholesterol, a low-fat diet (less than 30% of calories from fat) is likely more effective than a low-carb diet for lowering these specific numbers over the next 6-23 months. Note that this benefit disappears after 24 months.
GoodSupportsMEDIUM confidence
However, the decrease of total cholesterol (0.14 mmol/L; 95% CI, 0.07 to 0.20 mmol/L) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (0.10 mmol/L; 95% CI, 0.06 to 0.14 mmol/L) was more conducive to LFD in 6–23 months.
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of 33 RCTs, though GRADE quality was low/very low.
Source
Effects of low-carbohydrate diets versus low-fat diets on metabolic risk factors in overweight and obese adults: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
Lifu Lei et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2022
DOI 10.3389/fnut.2022.935234
Meta-analysis · 33 studiesCited 30×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- In overweight and obese adults, low-carbohydrate diets (LCD) produce greater reductions in triglycerides, diastolic blood pressure, and body weight, along with greater increases in HDL cholesterol, compared to low-fat diets (LFD) over a duration of 6 to 23 months.Good
- After 24 months of adherence, there is no significant difference in weight loss or improvements in metabolic risk factors between low-carbohydrate diets and low-fat diets.Good
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