Low-Fat Diet: How Effective is Fat-Restriction?

low fat diet
How effective is it to reduce fat in the diet?

© Nadiia Loboda / Shutterstock

by Julia Gerbeth and Stephanie Pingel

4/21/2022 9:26 am

With the low-fat diet, fat is largely avoided in the daily menu. But what is really behind the principle – and how useful is it?

What is a low fat diet?

With nine calories per gram, fat provides about twice as much energy as protein or carbohydrates. From this, low-fat supporters have drawn an apparently logical conclusion: Anyone who eliminates high-fat products from their diet will lose weight. The principle of a low-fat diet is therefore to reduce the proportion of fat calories or fat intake to 30 to 60 grams per day, to be able to lose weight more easily.

The German Institute for Human Nutrition (DIFE) has stated in the past that “low fat” is a rather vague term with room for interpretation. Gentler variants of “low-fat” allow all foods that have a general fat content of less than 30 percent. This includes, for example, Low Fat 30. More radical variants call for total fat to make up no more than 30 percent of total calories per day. The reduction of fat consumption is also the basis of many diets such as the 5:2 diet, the Mediterranean diet and the Schroth cure. The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) recommends that adults should get a maximum of 30 percent of their energy from fat every day.

What can I eat on a low-fat diet?

The following foods are allowed on the low-fat diet:

  • vegetables
  • fruit
  • lean meat
  • Low-fat dairy products
  • Fish
  • legumes
  • Fillers such as whole grain rice and pasta as well as bread and potatoes

So basically will Eliminate foods that contain a lot of fat and replaced with low-fat products.

What shouldn’t I eat?

You should avoid these foods on the low-fat diet:

  • Fast food, such as pizza
  • Ready-made products, for example microwave dishes
  • Fatty sausages such as salami
  • Fatty dairy products such as cream or cheese

Advantages and disadvantages of the principle

The low-fat diet has various Strengths and weaknesses:

The advantages

  • The low-fat diet is suitable for everyday use and quite easy to implement, as it does not require counting calories or strict food bans.
  • Eating a low-fat diet prevents cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke.
  • Since this weight loss model primarily relies on a healthy mixed diet and animal fats are largely avoided, there are basically no deficiency symptoms to be expected. On the contrary: the diet can be carried out for as long as you like.

Tips for experts: If you want to eat low-fat in the long term, you should make sure that you consume enough vegetable fats and not fall below the amount recommended by the DGE.

The disadvantages

  • The low-fat principle can be misinterpreted due to its vague terminology. So it is possible that you eat low-fat, but compensate for this reduction with higher amounts of carbohydrates and sugar, which in turn is unhealthy.
  • In general, carbohydrates are grossly neglected in this nutritional model, which ultimately play a major role in the development of obesity.
  • Anyone who radically and thus unhealthily cuts out fat from their diet must also expect a lack of essential fatty acids in the long term.

Tips: Recipes for low fat

Would you like to try the low-fat principle and need ideas for recipes? Here you will find delicious low-fat recipes!

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Low-Fat or Low-Carb – Which is More Effective for Getting Slim?

The principle of the low-fat diet has been around much longer than that of the low-carb diet. But which model (low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diet) is actually better for losing weight? As a studypublished in Cell Metabolism Magazine, shows Obese people lose more body fat with low-fat, but with low-carb they lose more weight overall.

Specifically said: The low-carb test subjects lost three times more kilos thanks to the nutrition plans as dieters who ate according to the low-fat model. The movement factor did not play a significant role in the study. BUT: Low-fat subjects stated that they hardly had any problems with tiredness, headaches or constipation. Low-carb advocates had much bigger problems with this.

Reading tips: Here we reveal why you should avoid trans fats. We also explain the low carb diet, the Dukan diet and the Logi method.

Sources

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