Questions About Carbs - Low Carb Diets

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Why do low carb diets get a bad rap?

As more and more people have become interested in low carb diets, more and more questions have been asked and a lot of them have been answered. It has now become quite confusing to find out about the benefits and risks of low carb diets. There are some basic concerns that health professionals are voicing about low carb diets. The different low carb diets have varying recommendations, but they all present the same problems and questions.

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What should our carb intake be?

This is the first question that can be answered in a few ways. Some of the low carb diets suggest 20% of your calories come from carbs, while others recommend 40%. Then, of course you have to consider that each of the diets do this in phases and allow different levels of carb intake during those phases. The US government, in contrast, recommends that we get 50-55% of our calories from carbs.

The US government also recommends that we get about 30% of our calories from fat, this is also the maximum that the American Heart Association recommends. But, the diets vary between 55-65%! To make matters worse a lot of these diets state that you can eat as much animal fat as desired along with vegetable oils. This is somehthing that really scares many heart specialists who claim that tis is excessive.

LAstly, the US government recommends getting 15-20% of our calories from protein while the low cerb diet developers claim that this number should be more like 25-40%! It is agreed across the board that a low carb diet can help you to lose weight in the short term with little risk to a healthy person, it is the long term situation that is not yet fully understood. There is scant evidence that a low carb diet can be as beneficial in the long term as it is in the short.