During his career, Chef Ben Vaughn has seen the culinary debate swing back and forth between different dieting trends. For a time, says Chef Ben Vaughn, it may seem that low fat diets are best for fitness and weight loss. Then a new rhetoric emerges, notes Chef Ben Vaughn, and low carb diets get touted as the most effective diets for health and weight loss.

It is Chef Ben Vaughn’s strong desire to restore balance to the way people think about eating. In light of this goal, Chef Ben Vaughn reports on a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. This journal published a study that compared the efficacy of low carb diets to low fat diets.

The study found, says Chef Ben Vaughn, that neither diet is better than its competitor. Chef Ben Vaughn says the study revealed that neither a low fat diet nor a low carb diet produced lasting healthy weight loss. The two-year study, notes Chef Ben Vaughn, followed the efforts of 307 people diagnosed as obese. These people were divided into two groups based on their diets.

Chef Ben Vaughn reports that both groups experienced comparable average weight loss, about 22 pounds. What’s more, says Chef Ben Vaughn, both groups gained nearly 1/3 of the weight back during the second year. Being restricted to low fat or low carb diets, says Chef Ben Vaughn, also had an effect on the health and morale of the participants.

Side effects of the study, reports Chef Ben Vaughn, included hair loss, bad breath and constipation. Chef Ben Vaughn says that the study was also illustrative of the shortcomings of diets in another way, namely dropout rate. Chef Ben Vaughn notes that over one third of the participants in the study dropped out because the diet was too difficult or unpleasant to stick with.