Are low carb diets associated with T2D?

Introduction

No sooner had I written the 700th Monday note – ending with how bad nutritional epidemiology is – my inbox started to fill up with the next piece of bad nutritional epidemiology.

An Australian study grabbed the headlines in Australia and some of my supporters down under sent me links to the paper and/or articles about it. One of these kind people was Dr Peter Brukner who used to be the doctor for the Australian cricket team. Peter is also a friend and a fellow speaker on the diet and health circuit. He also helped Shane Warne, among other sports people, to understand the power of a low-carb diet for losing weight without loss of performance.

The paper was called “Association of low carbohydrate diet score with the risk of type 2 diabetes in an Australian population: A longitudinal study” and it was by Kabthymer et al (Ref 1). A quick glance at the paper made me realise this was going to be an easy one to take apart.