I feel bad for people who believe this study. It promotes a low-carb diet for “reversing” diabetes:

A Novel Intervention Including Individualized Nutritional Recommendations Reduces Hemoglobin A1c Level, Medication Use, and Weight in Type 2 Diabetes, JMIR Diabetes, January-June 2017

A lot of people are latching on to it, as evidenced by the traction of these tweets by low-carb “diet doctors”:

First of all, it appears in an “eHealth publication.” That’s suspicious. If it truly reverses diabetes, if it’s helpful and not harmful, why not get it published in a more mainstream respected diabetes publication, like Diabetes Care? Dr. Barnard’s famous study, A Low-Fat Vegan Diet Improves Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes, was published in Diabetes Care.

The diet they’re promoting is high in protein, “targeted to a level of 1.5 g per kg body weight.” That’s almost twice the RDA of 0.8 g/kg. And since it’s a low-carb diet (actually very low-carb, less than 30 grams of carb a day, so little that it forces the body to generate ketones for energy), that protein isn’t coming from plants, like whole grains and beans, because they supply too much carb. It’s coming from animal food. And since it’s a high-fat diet, it’s coming from fatty animal food. It’s also very low in fiber.

This diet – high animal protein, low fiber, high fat, high saturated fat – is a recipe for poor health. The World Health Organization says that meat causes cancer:

• Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans
• Processed meat was classified as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans

Lots of meat also increases your renal acid load, which is hard on the kidneys. It draws calcium and other minerals from bone to buffer acids entering bloodstream, so it’s hard on the skeleton. It contributes to systemic inflammation. It has a high pesticide load, since pesticides bioaccumulate in fatty animal flesh. It promotes irregularity. It requires supplements for plant-based nutrients that are missing, like vitamin C and B-vitamins.

All these problems I’ve written about over the years. Yes, it may help you lose weight, but you mortgage your health doing so. Don’t be fooled.