Evidence Base

The studies behind every answer.

Original papers. Full analysis. Every finding linked to its DOI so you can check our work.

The Diet War That Ended in a Jar of Peanut Butter Stanford tracked 609 adults for a year on low-carb vs low-fat. The entire difference was less than a jar of peanut butter — and even that might not be real. Gardner et al. · 2018 · JAMA · n=609

Equal Taste, 500 Hidden Calories They rated both diets the same. Then ate an entire extra meal's worth of calories on ultra-processed food — every day, for two weeks, without noticing. Hall et al. · 2019 · Cell Metabolism · n=20

The Phantom Dinner Keto Couldn't Feel Twenty adults on a metabolic ward ate identically tasty food on both diets. One side quietly consumed an extra dinner's worth of calories every single day — and nobody noticed until the data came back. Hall et al. · 2021 · Nature Medicine · n=20

278 Extra Calories — or Zero? A controlled-feeding trial found low-carb burns 278 extra calories a day after weight loss. Then another team reanalyzed the raw data and the number kept getting smaller. The metabolic edge debate in four numbers. Ebbeling et al. · 2018 · The BMJ · n=164

The yogurt was never the enemy A meta-analysis pooled every sugar-and-weight trial ever run. The finding that dissolves a decade of label anxiety landed in a single number — and it's not where parents have been looking. Morenga et al. · 2013 · BMJ

The squat stayed where it was Six controlled trials pooled 131 trained lifters on keto versus normal diets. The one-rep max data told a story most gym advice gets wrong. Vargas-Molina et al. · 2024 · Nutrients · n=131

The Dusty Tub on the Bottom Shelf Won A meta-analysis of 62 trials found that the cheapest fiber supplement outperformed the trendiest one by two to one — and the expensive option's result wasn't even reliable. Plus: the first eight weeks are a dead zone. Jovanovski et al. · 2020 · The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · n=3,877

The post-workout clock was never ticking Nineteen sports nutrition researchers reviewed decades of timing evidence. What they found about your post-workout window, your gummy bears, and your glycogen tank rewrites the routine. Kerksick et al. · 2017 · Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition

The Slow-Carb Tax: What Your Oat Upgrade Actually Bought Fourteen long-term trials pooled nearly 1,800 people on low-GI vs high-GI diets. The weight difference was smaller than a day's water fluctuation, but the metabolic story had a twist nobody expected. L et al. · 2013 · Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases · n=2,344

The rice was along for the ride Researchers pooled every controlled trial on carbs and muscle growth. The finding challenges what most lifters have been doing at every meal. Henselmans et al. · 2026 · Sports Medicine · n=227

Studies

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