As soon as the low fat, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet is promoted for the prevention and reversal of chronic disease, champions of the high-fat, low-carbohydrate (aka carb) approach aim to degrade it in full force. I’ve been observing this contentious conversation for over a year with the goal of understanding the discord, disconnect, and disinformation between the two approaches.
Before I launch into my comparison between high-carb/low-fat (HCLF) and high-fat/low-carb (HFLC) let me make this point crystal clear: this article is addressing real, whole, plant-based food only. I’m not writing about refined carbs or processed starches like white sugar, white flour, fruit juices, alcohol, crackers, chips, pretzels, or any other nutritionally stripped, highly processed foods that are high in carbohydrates. Additionally I am not writing about refined fats like vegetable oils including olive oil and coconut oil. I am only interested in real, whole, plant-based, vegan foods for health, environmental, and animal rights reasons. Both the HCLF and HFLC are moderate in protein intake.
Okay, now that that is clear, let’s compare.
High-carb/low-fat (HCLF) eaters consume whole fruit, grains, legumes, tubers, and vegetables in large quantities with nuts, seeds, and high-fat plant foods like avocado, olives, and coconuts in low quantities. These eaters may keep all their foods raw, some may cook their plant foods, and some may eat a combination of raw and cooked.
Click: Getting Started on a Low Fat, Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet
High-fat/low-carb (HFLC) eaters consume low-carb/starch vegetables, nuts, seeds, and high fat fruits like avocado, olives, and coconut meat in large quantities and low-glycemic (low carb/sugar) fruits like berries in low quantities. Some HFLC eaters consume tofu and tempeh which are considered low in carbohydrates. These eaters may keep all their foods raw, some may cook their plant foods, and some may eat a combination of raw and cooked.
People who wish to maintain their weight as well as moderate to very active people may wish to eat a HCLF diet. People who wish to lose significant weight, cancer patients, epileptics and people with other brain disorders, and very active endurance athletes may wish to consume a HFLC diet. Why? Because training your body to burn fat instead of glucose (sugar/carbs) for fuel can be beneficial for rapid weight loss, for omitting cancer-feeding natural sugars, for reducing epileptic seizures, and for those who exercise for hours per day and need ample stores of fuel.
A HFLC diet is a ketonic diet. Most popular ketonic diets are animal-based so there is not much scientific research available for whole-food, vegan ketonic diets. Many vegan ketonic diet eaters consume vegetable oils (olive, coconut, etc.) to meet fat intake requirements which I can not whole-heartedly recommend.
Click: 6 Health-Preserving Reasons to Stop Consuming Oil
Benefits of a whole food, vegan ketonic diet are:
1. appetite suppression causing lower calorie intake
2. rapid weight loss due to water loss and reduced calorie intake
3. reduction in abdominal fat
Challenges of a whole food, vegan ketonic diet are:
1. Some people find ketosis difficult to maintain past 6 months
2. dehydration
3. bad breath/body odor due to dehydration & ketone production (metabolic byproduct of converting fat to fuel)
The body can store approximately two days worth of glycogen (glucose fuel) in the muscles and liver, so after two days on a HFLC or whole food, vegan ketonic diet the body will start to convert dietary and body fat into fuel. This adaptation process could take a few weeks to become fully efficient. You can measure the ketones in your urine to determine if you’re in ketosis by using products such as Ketostix.
Here’s the catch:
You can’t consume high-carb and high-fat and expect good health and weight maintenance. Both the HCLF and HFLC approaches have individual merit but they can’t be combined. Think about it…are there any super sweet, high fat plants in nature? No. Health issues like weight gain and blood-sugar disorders like hypoglycemia and diabetes come when high fats and high carbohydrates are consumed together…not in the same recipe or same meal specifically but in the same over all diet. You either need to focus on whole food, vegan high carbs OR whole food, vegan high fats. You can’t do both and expect stellar results unless you are an elite athlete who can eat anything and everything and must intake copious amount of all calories to fuel activity. That’s not the majority of us.
Vegan Keto (HFLC) veggie spiral noodles with olives and avocado
Avoiding high-carb, high-fat whole, vegan meals would mean not eating simple carbs (fruit) and nuts (almond milk strawberry nice cream or fruit tarts with nut crusts), avoiding avocado and fruit smoothies, and not pairing whole coconut with whole fruit. Big Sweet + Big Fat = Big Problems. If keeping weight in check is still difficult, not pairing complex carbs/starches (grains, legumes, tubers) with fat is wise like avoiding granola mixes (grains, nuts, dried fruit) and nut cheeses and nut sauces (cashew alfredo) on grains.
HCLF sweet potato with beans
If you embark on a whole food, vegan ketonic diet you must be strict. One high carbohydrate food intake can throw you out of ketosis, spike insulin, cause you to start burning carbohydrates (glycolysis) for fuel again, and halt fat burning (ketosis) anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. (source)
I believe a high-carb, low-fat (HCLF) whole food, plant-based vegan diet is a perfectly safe and nutritious way of eating. However if a high-fat, low-carb (HFLC) whole food, plant-based vegan diet is needed to lose significant weight, to reduce natural sugar exposure in the body, to control epileptic seizures or other brain malfunctions, or to fuel endurance athletic pursuits, it is entirely possible.
Personal experience has shown me that if I allow too much fat to slip into my HCLF whole food, vegan diet – espeically in the form of oils like with salad dressings – then I easily gain weight. Conversely I easily lose and maintain weight when keeping my fat intake in check and minimized. I clearly am an efficient carb burner. In this case it would be true what many WFPB doctors say: “the fat you eat is the fat you wear.” If you are eating a HFLC diet and are losing weight, clearly the fat you eat is not the fat you wear.
If you’re a carb burner, too much dietary fat will cause weight gain. If you’re a fat burner in ketosis, too much dietary carbohydrate will cause weight gain because you’ll be kicked out of ketosis and basically be consuming carbs with too much fat. Only people who expend an enormous amount of calories a day either through exercise or manual labor will be efficient carb and fat burners.
HCLF is not better or worse than HFLC. They are different and meant to achieve different goals. There is no need to argue about which is better than the other. The most important point is they both have merit and both must be adhered to strictly to achieve therapeutic benefits. As soon as high fat and high carbohydrates start to mix, both the HCLF and HFLC approaches lose their efficacy.
Additional Resources
• Is the Brain Fueled by Fat, Protein, or Carbs?
• My friend Sarah Mastriani-Levy of Mannafest Living is currently eating a vegan ketonic diet and experiencing benefits. If you’d like to follow her, click into her website and access her social links where she posts many vegan keto recipes.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for putting this article and discussion forward. I must admit I have been quite confused about this debate. I basically follow the HCLF approach. My question still is “what is really considered low fat?” You have a chart to guide the low carbohydrate folks but how low do we have to go to be considered low fat? Even with this strategy I do find it still a struggle to lose the weight and keep it off.
Thanks! Eliza
Hi Eliza, approximately 10% of daily calories need to come from whole fats if you’re aiming to maintain or lose weight, so if you’re eating a 2,000 calorie per day diet, about 200 calories from whole fat is adequate. It doesn’t take too many nuts or much avocado to add up to 200 calories. If you’re still not losing weight at this amount, scale back. Be cautious of hidden fats in any prepared, processed, or packaged foods and condiments. Complex carbs will burn slower than simple carbs which may help with weight loss too.
Hello.
I am a massage therapist, too, and considering a vegan diet. You say high carb and high fat together are bad, but what about moderate carb with moderate fat for a mesomorph body type and those who are FODMAP sensitive while also being sensitive to cholesterol-inducing fat (animal and plant) in the diet, so long as a healthy caloric intake is adhered to? Would a balanced, moderate fat and carb, vegan diet cause weight gain?
Thank you!
Thanks for writing Tash. You’ll have to experiment on yourself. Try a whole-food, plant-based moderate carb/moderate fat diet and see how your body responds. If you find your self gaining unwanted weight, lower the fat and increase the whole complex carbs. Best wishes!
hi i am a budding nutritionist and i want to conduct a research on the topic BETTER FUEL FOR BRAIN……KETONES OR GLUCOSE and i want to know how brain using ketones is unhealthy as most of the nutritionist critisize high fat low carb diets or ketogenic diets to be precize
It is my understanding that ketogenesis is a short-time, stressful, and survival state of the body which can be very effective, however it is not meant for long-term application. The brain may function well on a keto diet for a short while but the overall side-effects (cholesterol, saturated fat) can be detrimental for the long term. Study The Blue Zones and you’ll see that the longest living, healthiest communities eat a predominantly plant-based diet with minimal meat, dairy, and eggs.
Great information. I see a lot of people substituting carbs with wrong foods. Low carb diet not only encourage weight loss but several studies also reveal that it can further prevent much medical conditions like heart disease and diabetes
There are no long term studies that I’m aware of that show an animal-based ketogenic diet prevent heart disease or diabetes type 2. If you are aware of such, please provide links.
Thank you for the unbiased article! It’s so nice to read both sides of the coin in an objective way!
You’re welcome. Thank you for taking the time to read & comment Janelle!
What about the Vegan Keto diet? It seems to me if you are going on a Keto diet that only a Vegan one is going to be healthy because the extreme acid load and cholesterol of an animal-based Keto diet would be detrimental. What do you think?
Yes I am addressing only a vegan keto diet in this article, not an animal based keto diet.
“Many vegan ketonic diet eaters consume vegetable oils (olive, coconut, etc.) to meet fat intake requirements which I can not whole-heartedly recommend.”
Olives and Avocados are fruits. Coconuts are recognized as a tree nut by the FDA, however they can also be considered a seed, a nut, and a fruit (see reference provided). These are not vegetable oils. They are very different from corn oil, canola oil, safflower oil, grapeseed oil, and the other unhealthy and cheap-to-produce oils.
There are mountains of evidence that fruit oils provide essential fatty acids that promote heart health, brain health, eye health, joint health, metabolic health, and more. Fatty acids are essential for proper function of the body. Cholesterol is the backbone of vital hormones such as testosterone, estrogen, glucocorticoids, mineralcorticoids, etc. Can you say the same about carbohydrates?
In fact, you can’t. There are no ‘essential carbohydrates’ needed for the body to perform or thrive. However, there are essential amino acids and essential fatty acids that we cannot live without.
My overall point I’m trying to make is that you are demonizing the healthy, essential nutrients people are supposed to be eating for a healthy diet by mislabeling them and grouping them with actually bad foods. Either it’s an honest mistake by an un-informed author, or malicious deception to promote your HCLF non-sense, however I hope your readers are keen enough not to miss this grave mistake.
a) https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/is-coconut-a-seed-a-fruit-or-a-nut.html
Hi Dale, I suppose it would have been more precise of me to refer to olive oil and coconut oil as plant oils instead of vegetable (vegetative) oils. Technically corn oil, canola (rapeseed) oil, safflower (seed) oil, grapeseed oil are not vegetable oils either. They are grain and seed oils. It may be imprecise but common to refer to plant oils as vegetable oils whether they be fruit, grain, nut, or seed. I can’t think of one vegetable oil that’s actually made from a vegetable. Vegetables tend to be low in fat content.
Fruit oils are ideally consumed as part of a whole fruit. The whole olive instead of olive oil. Coconut meat instead of coconut oil. Human bodies make all the cholesterol that they need. Eating dietary cholesterol is not necessary.
Whole simple and complex carbohydrates (NOT refined) provide easy fuel for cells – quick from whole fruit and slower from whole starches like grains and legumes. The body can survive without glucose from carbohydrates but it will convert fat and protein to glucose to survive.
Essential amino acids and essential fatty acids are called “essential” because the human body cannot manufacture them. It is essential to get them from food. It is possible to get all essential amino acids and fatty acids from the plant kingdom.
Please tell me exactly which foods I have mislabeled and which bad foods I have promoted. HCLF from whole plants is a healthful way to eat. I have no motivation to maliciously deceive anyone.