rise of the keto diet

lucas babando, a master’s student at western university, has been on the keto diet on and off for six years.“i wake up with absolutely no grogginess, it still astonishes me,” he says. “also, i don’t really get hungry anymore.”according to a 2019 poll conducted by dalhousie university, 26 per cent of canadians have either adopted the keto diet, tried it or considered trying it in the last 18 months.it’s even popping up on fast food menus: a&w, wendy’s and five guys all do lettuce-wrap burgers, while mr. sub has a keto bun.the question is: is keto actually healthy, or just another hyped-up diet fad?keto is based on a low-carb, high-fat intake. the liver produces ketone bodies, water-soluble molecules that pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source, mimicking fasting and essentially forcing the body to burn fat rather than carbohydrates.typical keto foods include non-starchy vegetables, full-fat dairy, high-protein foods like beef, poultry and eggs, nuts, seeds and fruits in moderation.a successful keto diet should result in weight loss and higher energy. a 2017 study from mcmaster university also found a link between high-carb diets and increased risk of heart disease, lending credence to the value of eating less pasta, bread and other refined grains, for example. epileptic seizures have also been controlled through keto diets since the 1920s.but as sylvain charlebois, the director of the agri-food lab at dalhousie university,points out, “we don’t know a whole lot about the ketogenic diet for people who don’t have epilepsy. most professionals would say that anyone using the ketogenic diet should consult their doctor.“everyone has different physiological needs and that’s why its difficult to say this diet is for everyone or for specific people.”the keto diet can have adverse effects as well. the “keto flu” is common when first adopting the diet and transitioning to burning fats over carbs.“it was very disorienting,” said babando. “i was getting stomachaches and generally i felt hazy, like i was a little drunk. that happened for about three days the first time i did it, then i overcame that.”other aspects of the keto diet have also come under scrutiny. a 2018 study in the lancet public health, for example, reported that among 15,428 adults between the ages of 45 to 64 there was an increased risk of death for those on both high- and low-carb diets. the best outcomes were among adults with a 50- to 55-percent carb intake.it also noted that “low carbohydrate dietary patterns favouring animal-derived protein and fat sources were associated with higher mortality, whereas those that favoured plant-derived protein and fat intake associated with lower mortality.”even the link between the keto diet and weight loss is up for debate.  in 2018, kevin hall and stephanie chung wrote in the current opinion in clinical nutrition and metabolic care that “low-carbohydrate diets are at least as effective for weight loss as other diets, but claims about increased energy expenditure and preferential loss of body fat are unsubstantiated.”they cite impairment of insulin sensitivity as a potential concern, and like the lancet study, the quality of the dietary fats is a factor.success on a keto diet may be tied to genetics as well. as reported in a 2010 study in the american journal of clinical nutrition, when researchers randomly assigned a high-fat and low-fat diet to obese individuals, they discovered that those who possess the tt variant of the tcf7l2 gene “experience greater weight loss when they consume lower-to-moderate fat diets.”