People who cut back on carbohydrates may end up increasing their risk of premature death if they load their plates with meat and cheese instead of vegetables and nuts, a US study suggests.While previous research has linked low-carbohydrate diets to better success with short-term weight loss and improvements in risk factors for premature death like diabetes, less is known about the long-term outcomes of cutting carbs, or what types of foods people should eat instead for optimal health.For the current study, researchers followed more than 15,000 adults ages 45 to 65 for about 25 years. During this period, 6,283 died.Participants who got 50 to 55 per cent of their calories from carbohydrates had a lower risk of death from all caes during the study period than people who had much lower or higher carbohydrate intake, researchers report in The Lancet Public Health.With lower carb intake, the types of foods people ate instead of carbs were associated with very different types of outcomes. “Low carbohydrate dietary patterns that replaced carbohydrate with animal-derived protein or fat were associated with greater mortality risk, whereas this association was reversed when energy from carbohydrate was replaced with plant-derived protein or fat,” said lead study author Dr. Sara Seidelmann of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “The key message from this study is that it is not enough to foc on cutting carbohydrates alone, but instead to foc on the types of food replacing them,” Seidelmann said by email.The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how eating fewer carbohydrates or more vegetables might directly impact longevity.But it’s possible plant-based proteins help people live longer by reducing inflammation and so-called oxidative stress, Seidelmann said. As the body es oxygen, it produces by-products called free radicals that can damage cells and tissues. The damage by oxygen free radicals is known as oxidative stress.At the same-time.
