U.S. health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s claim that a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet may cure certain psychiatric conditions is misleading and not backed by evidence, experts say.
At an event in Tennessee on Wednesday touting new nutrition guidelines that emphasize eating a diet rich in red meat, whole milk and animal fats, Kennedy said that a doctor at Harvard had “cured schizophrenia using keto diets” and that there were studies showing people “lose their bipolar diagnosis by changing their diet.”
A person eating a ketogenic diet typically gets at least 70 percent of their calories from fat, about 20 percent from protein and as little from carbohydrates as possible.
In his speech, Kennedy mentioned a “Dr. Pollan” at Harvard, but there appears to be no such person there or elsewhere who has studied the keto diet and its effect on schizophrenia; he may have meant to cite Christopher Palmer, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“While I appreciate the secretary’s [apparent] enthusiasm for my research, I have never claimed to cure schizophrenia, and I have never used the word cure in any of my talks or my research,” Palmer says.
“The way that I think about the ketogenic diet is not about a good diet versus a bad diet or a healthy diet versus an unhealthy diet. I think about it as a metabolic intervention,” he adds.
Read more on Scientific American.
