Don't read too much into the title. It's an animal study and found that another type of cancer went down simultaneously with this one type going up. It isn't the actual notable finding of the study either, the study's real title is Ketogenic diet mediates intestinal tumorigenesis through lipids not ketones.
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Fuck you big carb. I'm not listening to your bullshit.
It's OK if you don't eat carbs. Just, for the love of good, eat more fibre. People are killing themselves with weird fad diets.
It was funny to me that the "beef tallow not seed oils" fad was centered around a meta analysis that primarily recommended a high fiber diet instead of high carb, or protein.
I just not sure why I should care.
The air, water and earth are all poisoned. What am I holding out for here? Do I really want to be "healthy" at 70 for my third water war, or so I can work off my tax debit to finance the AI bail out at my gruel making job?
Hit me up after the revolution about how I should eat less meat and more beans 🤮.
It's important to remember that all these studies give numbers like ~20% increased risk so your odds go from 0.0035 to 0.0042. Fucking meaningless. And there's a billion of these studies so there's always going to be one you don't know about that cancels out your other ones
cancer can use the reverse warburg effect which is similar to what the byproducts of the keto metabolites produce, so it make sense.
Listen... Y'all need fiber. Need it. Quit protein-maxxxing or whatever else influencers say and make sure you're getting enough fiber and water.
My wife's mom is on a keto diet and it's so silly. She went on it because her sister is on it and lost a lot of weight. The secret to that weight loss? Cutting sugar. She literally refuses to eat BEANS because "they're a carb".
Fucking beans, man.
It is a little more than cutting sugar. If you replace all your simple sugar with complex sugar you will have an improvement in blood sugar control, that is true. You won't reverse insulin resistance with that change because you will still have elevated insulin levels all the time.
What ketosis allows is a period of time where you are not using large amounts of insulin to push your blood sugar down to safe levels. Instead you use gluconeogenesis (making sugar in the liver from fat) to push blood sugar up. This means you don't overshoot and have to push it back down.
If you stop using insulin all the time your body becomes less resistant and it becomes more effective, allowing you to actually push your blood sugar down when you need to. This is one of the core issues with diabetes and can actually be solved.
As for your wife's mum, what she is eating is up to her. She is an adult and has to make her own decisions. If she chooses something you wouldn't choose it isn't an indictment of your and your choices. She can do what she wants and so can you. It isn't a personal insult. If she chooses to take keto very seriously and won't eat beans then treat it like you would vegetarianism, don't be dismissive or rude, just be a supportive person and don't make bean (or other high carb) dishes when she is around for dinner. Or make the high carb dish as well as something for her. Or just make parts of the meal keto and others high carb and mix and match on your plate. Or don't have her over for dinner. Lots of options that don't require you matching her diet or pushing back on what she eats.
Diet is personal. It is personal for her, and yours is for you. Her diet is not personal for you. You don't need to concern yourself with her choice of food just like you don't need to be concerned with her choice of underwear.
you don't need to be concerned with her choice of underwear
Maybe her underwear is why she doesn’t want beans, like very varty
Beans are one of the best foods on this planet! You can eat nothing but carbs and still lose weight for god's sake!
Try researching a bit. If you eat carb you are out of ketosis doesn't matter beans or sugar
If you eat sufficient carbs yes, you will be knocked out of ketosis, but beans are not too high carb to have in moderation. You can't maintain ketosis if you are having hundreds of grams of beans but if you have a small amount to make a dish more enjoyable you can get by and make food much more manageable if that I'd important for you.
Personally I have had a small amount of refried beans in my Mexican beef dishes because of the flavour and especially the texture. They do add carbs but they add something important in the texture and I find then worthwhile. I actually also add some black beans, but only a small number, and capsicum (bell peppers) as well.
Nothing about the ketogenic approach to eating precludes fiber nor water and it does not promote maximizing protein.
It tells you to drastically limit carbohydrates, eat enough protein, and otherwise eat fat.
Some folks have reported better results eating more protein and less fat. More, not as much as possible. Not a ridiculous amount. 20-30 g per day more.
I'm very familiar with the complex social forces that lead people to get this wrong and for those wrong messages to proliferate. Please hold your cards and letters.
Source: I lost 160 pounds in my 30s eating keto and only gained back 40 once I reached middle age. I know that's not double-blind, but it's also not nothing.
Peace.
And how do you get fiber? All foods that have fiber have carbs.
Look at nutritional information, total carbs minus fiber is what you want. So something with high carb and high fiber will keep you in ketosis. Vegetables mostly are the way to go, leafy greens are a must. Keto is more than just eating bacon all day.
I get fiber by eating fiber. What's the problem?
But to them meat fits the criteria best. Carnivore and Paleo diets are at their core keto/Atkins diets.
I lost 100 lbs as a vegetarian and I don't restrict my diet beyond the no meat/few animal products part. Calories are and always will be the only factor in weight loss, but as far as health goes limiting and restricting different believed "problematic" aspects of food isn't good. You need carbs, fats, proteins, fiber etc even if cutting something will give quicker, aesthetic changes.
Congrats on your weight loss!
People make unnecessary assumptions and that causes them problems. When I took active part in various Keto and LCHF communities, I volunteered to help with that. No, you can't just eat bacon. No, carbohydrates aren't forbidden, but merely limited. And so on.
I remember some active folks helping people who didn't want to eat meat learn how to eat Keto without meat. Some of them even managed not to be stereotypical vegans. 😉
And I'll tell you what I've told everyone who has "well, ackshually"d me about CICO: yes, but sugar seems to cause most people most of the time to struggle with limiting food intake, whereas fat tends to do the opposite for those folks, so eating more fat and very little sugar helps them play the game on easy mode. This is an effective way to transform eating habits. I was one of those people. Eat fat xor sugar, for the folks who understand Boolean.
And I'll point out three things:
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Studies that purport to study and debunk low carbohydrate eating routinely choose limits for carbohydrates higher than what Keto and LCHF actually eat, which renders them inconclusive regarding what we actually do. Some of them, for the sake of simplicity, feed subjects fats in a way that no human would, which avoids the benefits of eating a variety of whole foods, which Keto and LCHF approaches recommend.
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There's no guarantee that the health problems introduced by extensive Keto/LCHF eating are worse than the health problems that accompany an extra 20-50 years of obesity. Neither "side" can be sure of its stance here. In particular, cancer comes for us all, in one way or another. In many ways, life is becoming an exercise in ensuring that cancer gets you instead of some other disease. 🤷
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Many folks, including me, report success using Keto/LCHF as an intervention rather than a lifestyle. I can report that I changed my eating habits radically so that now, even when I'm not attentively restricting carbohydrates, my default choices hurt my body less than they did before Keto/LCHF. I think that's why I've regained 40 pounds instead of all of it.
Losing weight is not about calories. It is about hunger. Topic is complicated, too lazy to explain, but mainly thats how ozempic became popular
So I can eat 4000 calories a day and only burn 3000 and lose weight? Tell me more!
I infer they mean that you can't divorce CICO from patterns in hunger signals.
Largely correct. It is more about your body either holding on to body fat or using it for energy. There are various ways you can make the body hold on to fat or release fat. Some are more or less healthy depending on personal context.
Many psychiatric meds cause weight gain, specifically fat gain, by driving up insulin. Some others cause increases in appetite. Others cause a reduction in BMR which with no change in diet will cause more fat gain. Some psychiatric meds made getting enough food hard (I'm looking at your Ritalin) and thus have an opposing effect.
Most of the effects on body fat are mediated by hormones like insulin, grehlin, glucagon, and so on. GLP-1 (Glucagon Like Peptide 1) medications target the receptors for glucagon and activate them in a more sustained way that glucagon does, causing changes in appetite along with every availability. There are other effects as well, thus the side effects, but that is the basic mechanism. We actually don't understand GLP-1 medications fully at this point so we can expect any current description to change over time, but for now that is basically how they work.
A gastroenterologist said on an episode of his podcast “fiber is the girl you thought protein was” and I felt that.
Lol it's true!
You eat fiber in keto diets just without the carbs. I even take additional fiber supplements to make sure I'm having enough
Yeah you do.
fiber supplements
Fiber supplements are usually functionally useless (e.g. study https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5413815/ ) - and that includes inulin - or even harmful. Unless of course if by "supplements" you mean something like "I eat raw XXX as a fiber supplement".
This is a study on glycemic control on fiber. In no way does it claim that fiber supplements are useless because that is not glycemic control is not its only intended use.
I have IBS, and psyllium husk has helped relieve many of my symptoms that many high-FODMAP fruits and vegetables cannot.
Please don't point to a misunderstood study and use it to invalidate other people's symptoms and effective treatments.
And if you were to read the study beyond the title, you'd notice they list psyllium husk as working, making it fall into category I wrote as
“I eat raw XXX as a fiber supplement”.
There exist psyllium processed supplements. If you were to switch to them, they don't gel (which is likely what helps your for the IBS), and within 6 months or so you'd be back to being fucked.
Please don’t point to a misunderstood study and use it to invalidate other people’s symptoms and effective treatments.
I literally wrote "e g. study". So you can take that attitude and shove it.
Hey, just as an outsider to your conversation above, I don't think the overall attitude here is super helpful or positive. That person read your post in a way you didn't mean it, you bounced back a couple of times, and it ended in telling someone to take their attitude and shove it. That is a fairly aggressive response and probably not great for them or for you. Living with that kind of outward aggression is painful and not actually helpful for defending yourself.
Something you may find helpful is restructuring with the assumption that they have misunderstood in good faith, without malice or accusation. For example,
"Ah, yes, they did list psyllium husk as working, it is one of the raw fibres, but the refined and processed ones don't work, they fail to gel. As for invalidating your symptoms, that wasn't my intention, I was trying to provide useful information of what not to do. If I were doing the wrong thing to manage a health condition I would want to know. Good to know psyllium husk is working for you."
It is much better for you and them, and honestly I have had a large number of interactions like this where the other person comes back and apologises for any confusion, seeing my tone and changing from defensive to conciliatory. It feels nicer than "winning". Anyway, good luck, have fun.
Suppressing all conflicts is not good for ya. Instead of preserving peace, habitual avoidance you're peddling makes people unable to recognize healthy disagreement and instead makes them think it's all fighting to be winning, stunting growth of all involved.
Something you may find helpful
You should've taken your own advice then, and asked if you can "mediate", because you think it might be helpful.
Pushing your "mediation", especially framed as an advice, is just feeding your ego, "winning" in a conflict your not a part of.
Anyway, good luck, have fun.
If you show that message with that ending to a random passerby, and ask them if you just wrote "fuck you", or was genuine, what do you think said random passerby would think?
Just to start, it was definitely not meant as any sort of "fuck you". Genuinely. Please reread with the opposite emotional valence as that was definitely not what I wanted to achieve at all. I honestly did want to say good luck and have fun, but not like some sort of sassy sign off, I will work on that for the future.
In my opinion, which you are free to dismiss, your previous language was somewhat aggressive and dismissive. Your conversational partner seemed to find it to be so and reacted to that, so I don't think it is just my bad reading of your statements. It is entirely possible that you meant no harm, had no aggression at all, and your personal expressive language was just not a great fit for either myself or the other conversational partner.
When I said "Something you may find helpful" I meant those words, not something else. You may find a 10mm socket wrench useful, you may not, it depends on your current needs which I don't have access to, but hey, if you need a 10mm socket wrench I have one, along with my opinion above. It is offered in the spirit of kindness and also a lack of obligation, you don't have to take my opinion on or show why it is wrong, you are free to just ignore it and mark it as read.
I don't have an investment in you beyond hoping things go well for any other person. I do have an investment in the communities I participate in, so when I see something like your previous conversation and think I can make things a little better, a touch nicer, I feel motivated to do so. Feel free to look through my history, I really do try to consistently explain things, make things clearer, and resolve conflicts with discussion. I try not to dismiss the concerns of other people and in this case I have failed to note and respond to your concerns effectively.
I do not consider what I was doing as mediating, but I can see how you would read it that way and I perhaps should have used a direct message to prevent that interpretation. Do you think that would have been better? A less public forum? Please do answer this, I actually do care about your thoughts here.
I don't have any ego invested in this. I hope things go well for you, I have some tools it has taken a long time to acquire, they seemed possibly useful for you in this situation, so I tried to offer them.
Suppressing conflict is not the goal. The goal is resolving conflict, or at least for me. Agreeing to disagree is a perfectly good resolution. Finding a common ground and having someone expand or change their mind is a good resolution. Having someone change my mind is just as good as someone else changing their mind, and both are a little better than just agreeing to disagree. I am not trying to preserve peace at the cost of resolution, I believe that the level of conflict present was not conducive to a resolution and pulling back a tiny bit would make a resolution more achievable.
Anyway, I really truly hope things go well for you, no hard feelings if not, and feel free to ignore, reply, reply with a DM, or whatever else floats your boat, I genuinely hope you have a good day from here.
I add daily fiber gummies after every meal and also veggies that are low carb but high fiber for many meals.
Key phrase from the actual scientific article :
"In the gastrointestinal tract, obesogenic high-fat diets enhance small-intestinal stem cell activity and tumorigenesis"
That means that a high-fat diet that causes obesity DOES increase your small intestine's propensity for developing tumors. So the news article's hedging in its headline, saying "may increase cancer risk", is under-selling the certainty of the science that says "high-fat diets and obesity cause cancer". The only thing the scientific article's investigating is whether the diet being ketogenic changes that. It concludes that it does not, that even a ketogenic diet will be cancer-causing, but this is just one study so it's not unreasonable to want to see more consensus and peer review before accepting the findings.
However, on a more general level and ignoring ketosis, common sense should tell anyone that a high-fat diet which causes obesity will also make you more likely to get cancer, and science is also already pretty satisfied that that's proven. So nobody should read this news headline and think that that is in doubt in any way.
Just a quick clarification. This is a mouse study. This is not a study in humans.
What do mice eat? What do humans eat? Are we closely related to mice? Do we occupy the same niche? No. This tells us about mice eating a ketogenic diet, not about humans doing so.
Monkeys exaggerate, mice lie. Something shown in primates is likely, though not guaranteed, to be similar in humans, though the degree may be very different. Something shown in mice may or may not replicate in humans at all, and the degree is often very different even if it does.
Mouse studies are great in some ways. They are cheap, fast, and very well understood. You can copy the study design from someone else and save a lot of effort designing your study. You can control for really specific factors by choosing what specific mice you use. You can control their diet perfectly, use large numbers at low cost, and see their full life cycle in just a couple of years.
Mouse studies also suck in a bunch of ways. Humans are not mice, so translating the research is not easy or reliable. Something that causes an issue in mice may or may not translate to humans for a bunch of reasons. They make their own vitamin C for example, so you may have to knock out their genes for making vitamin C if you want to make them get scurvy. You have to humanise them and these changes are always approximations.
So this study does show that a high fat diet that causes obesity IN MICE does increase tumorgenesis in the small intestine. In mice. Not in humans. Every claim here needs that caveat to be made clearly and directly. If they do a translational study in humans I will happily read it, but this study? To me it is worse than useless. It is irrelevant at best and misleading at worst.
That quote is the second sentence in the abstract and the next sentence is:
However, the impact of ketogenic diets (KDs), which contain even higher lipid content but reduce circulating insulin and induce ketogenesis, remains poorly understood.
I read that as saying existing science says high-fat diets that cause you to become obese increase the risk of cancer in the small intestine. Not anything about their findings in this study specifically.
The end of the abstract says:
These findings reveal that dietary lipid content, through fatty acid oxidation rather than ketone metabolism, influences intestinal tumorigenesis and highlight the need for nuanced consideration of dietary strategies for cancer prevention in genetically susceptible populations.
Which I think is implying that they found some difference between their "high-fat" (60% lard diet) and "ketogenic" (80% lard diet) cohorts.
I can't find the full content of the paper to verify exactly what they're trying to say, but I think the only claims they're trying to make are basically, 'there's no point in consuming externally synthesized ketones'. Which, yeah, but good to have proper scientific confirmation.
Has anyone found the actual article? It doesn't seem to be available on SciHub yet. Based on what little I can find without the whole article, it sounds like the "ketogenic diet" was giving the mice almost nothing but lard.
(a) Composition of the control diet (CD), 60% lard-based high fat diet (HFD) and 80% lard-based ketogenic diet (KD).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10779-y (Extended data figures and tables)
That doesn't seem like a great diet. But, maybe that's normal for these kinds of studies where they're trying to induce cancers?