Keto vs General Population

Then there’s keto. Cut the carbs. Eat fat instead. Watch your body switch from burning glucose to burning fat. For many people, this produces dramatic results.

What’s strange is not that keto works for some people. What’s strange is how differently people respond. If you put two people on identical diets, one might lose weight effortlessly while the other doesn’t. We don’t fully understand why.

The general population follows the standard advice: eat carbs, limit fat, exercise. Obesity rates keep rising.

Maybe the problem is not that people ignore advice, but that the advice is wrong for a large fraction of them.

What strikes me is how similar this is to other domains. The “general population” approach is to do what seems normal, what everyone else does. But normal is often just what worked in the past, before anyone studied it carefully.

The interesting thing about being a contrarian in diet is that you might be right about your own body, or you might be wrong. Unlike other fields, you can run experiments on yourself cheaply and quickly.

I don’t know if keto is the answer for everyone. But I know that whatever the average person is doing, it’s probably not optimal for a significant fraction of them.