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I noticed there was a hatnote directing users to Low-carbohydrate diet, but it's pretty easy to miss or scroll past. Maybe we could add a short section with 2-3 sentences about the fad diet with a Template:Main section hatnote. Here's a sketch I put together with information and refs from the low-carbohydrate diet article. 143.244.37.117 ( talk) 03:01, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Fad diet

In the 2010s, the ketogenic diet's medical use inspired a fad diet for people wanting to lose weight. ^[1] Celebrity endorsements contributed to the popularity of the diet trend. There is no evidence that an extreme low-carbohydrate diet has any distinctive benefit for weight loss, and it carries a risk of adverse effects. ^{[2] [3]}

Discussion

Any thoughts on this? I understand there is a desire to keep pseudoscience out of this article, but I think it might be more useful to acknowledge the existence of the fad diet while clearly stating its lack of scientific basis. 143.244.37.117 ( talk) 03:01, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for considering a solution to the problem. I had another read of Wikipedia:Disambiguation today. I think our current practice of having the medical therapy as the primary article, rather than making the page a disambiguation page or making it discuss all diets that may be ketogenic, is the best approach. The therapy is 100 years old, and will still be around long after using such an limiting diet for weight loss becomes a rare thing. In addition, being ketogenic is just an extreme kind of (or phase in) a variety of low-carb diets. Having a small section that informs the reader of an alternative usage of the term is not a practice recommended in our guidelines. I agree that casual readers may not notice the hatnote, but readers who are more familiar with Wikipedia will probably spot it more readily and give it a quick glance when they arrive at a page from searching. It has become a standard and low-impact way of mentioning alternatives. -- Colin° ^Talk 08:51, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

There needs to be a section on "as a fad diet" added to this article. It was on my list of things to do for a long time. Please see the gluten-free diet article. It has a section "As a fad diet​". We don't need to create a new article for this. I suggest this content to be added at the bottom of the article in a new section. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 12:13, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Psychologist Guy, as a coeliac patient, few things piss me off more than so-called "gluten sensitive" people who loudly demand GF but do exactly none of the work necessary to understand whether their food is at risk of cross-contamination, which is my #1 source of poisoning. Guy ( help! - typo?) 12:16, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

The "diet for weight loss" is not a sub-topic of "diet for epilepsy therapy". The only way that would work is if the scope of this article was expanded to include any ketogenic diet for any purpose. The first problem with that is that is not what our reliable sources do. They talk about these things separately. So should we. -- Colin° ^Talk 19:54, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

It is a sub-topic in that the weight loss diet was directly inspired by the medical diet. There are reliable sources that specifically discuss the (mis)use of the medical diet as a weight loss diet, such as those cited in the proposed subsection. Having a subsection helps to explain the relationship between the topics more than can be practically done in a hatnote. 143.244.37.141 ( talk) 21:44, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Please don't set up a straw-man argument, I'm not proposing making this a disambiguation page or changing the topic of the article. I'm proposing adding a short section about the fad diet inspired by the topic of this article. It's not an unrelated topic which happens to share a similar name. 143.244.37.141 ( talk) 21:44, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not setting up a straw-man argument, just outlining the various options open to editors at the guideline page for dealing with this sort of issue. "inspired by" is a tenuous reason for including a subsection, and I'm not actually convinced it is inspired by it. Of course people will briefly mention the 100-year-old medical therapy for various reasons such as giving it an air of medical soundness rather than quackery, but I don't think anyone thought "I wonder if this treatment for really sick children, which fixes their epilepsy, might help me lose weight". It seems more likely a consequence of taking a "carbs are evil" approach to its extreme conclusion, searching to see if there has been any research done on what happens to you if you essentially avoid carbs altogether, and discovering by chance there's an epilepsy therapy that does just that. -- Colin° ^Talk 22:03, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the disambiguation guideline is relevant here. According one source discussing the history of the fad diet, ^[4] the trend attained prominence when pop-culture figures seized on some actual scientific research into the ketogenic diet and started promoting the diet as a magical panacea for health and weight loss, far in excess of the actual findings. So it is accurate to say that the fad diet is a direct offshoot of the medical topic, albeit an unscientific one.

More relevant guidelines would be WP:DUE and perhaps WP:ONEWAY. I would argue that the latter guideline does not apply as the use of ketogenic diets for weight loss has some coverage in scientific sources as a topic of potential research interest, ^{[5] [6] [7]} so it's not a totally fringe topic. It's just that the fad takes a kernel of real science and extrapolates it into the realm of pseudoscience. As for due weight, I think a few sentences isn't excessive given the article's size.

In case this wasn't clear, I'm not trying to promote the fad diet and I'm not suggesting Wikipedia should either. My suggestion is to briefly describe the existence of the fad, explain its connection to the article subject, clearly state that it's not supported by scientific research, and provide a section hatnote to the main article about it. 143.244.37.205 ( talk) 07:45, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Even if we assume for the moment that "Mens Health" is a reliable source, it doesn't in fact argue that the fad diet comes from the epilepsy diet. It mentions a series of independent proponents of a low-carb ketogenic diet. Wrt to WP:DUE, the professional sources on the epilepsy diet do not discuss diets for life extension, bodybuilding or helping reduce middle-aged spread. Disambiguation is relevant because these are actually different diets: the fad one is high protein and designed for weight loss, the epilepsy one is adequate protein and designed as much as possible for the child to grow normally. -- Colin° ^Talk 12:50, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

/info/en/?search=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Saturated_Fat,_shifting_consensus,_Cardiovascular_disease_(CVD)_,_and_general_health. Please feel free to participate. Thank you!— Preceding unsigned comment added by FrederickZoltair ( talk • contribs) 00:56, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the added section on long-term effects. The sources there were studying use of low-carb diets for weight loss in adults. This article is about a medically supervised therapy in children. The diet for children is merely adequate protein, whereas many low-carb diets for weight loss in adults have high protein as well as high fat. The main concern with children is growth and other development issues. In adults doing weight loss there are concerns about lack of nutrients because they are not being medically supervised, whereas the epilepsy diet is supervised by a hospital dietitian. One paper on the KD for epilepsy notes "the evaluation of long-term efficacy and side effects is particularly difficult due to the inability of the subjects to continue a KDT over an extended period of time. Retention rates on the cKD at 1 year and 2 years have been reported at 45.7% and 29.2%, respectively" I'm not aware of any study of patients with significant data beyond two years. The children who respond well tend to stay on the diet, and there are cases who have been on it for many years, but not to collect enough data to comment on side effects generally. Some of the removed text could be useful in the Low-carbohydrate diet article. -- Colin° ^Talk 12:41, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Colin. I wasn't aware that the articles about LC and keto are strictly seperated into diet and medical therapy. It is my impression that a lot of keto is going on in social media that is borderlining between LC and keto. In a way that people do long-term LC with some keto interventions. Is there no article/section that deals with the fad diet version of keto where my section could make sense? Tischbeinahe ( talk) 12:49, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Tischbeinahe, you'll find some info at the FAQ on the top of this talk page, and in the archives this has been discussed several times. The borderlining is part of the problem, with all sorts of diet variants and no easy way to establish an article that is more specific that the LCD one. Many LCD are only ketogentic at times (e.g. the induction phase of the Atkins) and most adults aren't be supervised by a dietetian or testing themselves daily, etc, etc. And some are using this fad diet for weight loss, for diabetes control, for body building and for life extension. Medically, low carb diets are being property studied (for weight loss or diabetes), and ketogenic diets investigated for some other therapeutic uses (mainly neurological). I think the biggest problem for people writing about LCDs in general is that Wikipedians are not allowed to syntheise, whereas an expert could perhaps take the results of study X and claim it was appliable to patient group Y. -- Colin° ^Talk 15:01, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Colin for your support. I’ll have a look into the archive. Tischbeinahe ( talk) 19:16, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

See Ketogenic diet (fad diet) (section at the bottom), put good sources there. The section needs to be expanded. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 21:49, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Psy, I have already included the content in Low-carbohydrate_diet#Safety. Tischbeinahe ( talk) 07:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Colin not sure if this new review is useful: PMID  35718870 SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:13, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Sandy. I don't think this paper advances what we say in the article text, that these neurological conditions are being researched. I found the authors rather credulous about all the case studies and small pilot trials. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:10, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

As is suspected; thanks for looking :) SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 12:26, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Links to any article(s) on ("pure") carnivore diet(s) - or experiments on it? Would be very interesting to say the least. 84.211.240.52 ( talk) 16:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

See monotrophic diet for the carnivore diet. Psychologist Guy ( talk) 20:20, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

See the categories listed at the bottom of the (article) page, where you can explore other diets. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 21:11, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

The Low-Carbohydrate Diet that we're supposed to refer to for the weight-loss version of the ketogenic diet refers directly back to this page. So why not add a section here, with an opportunity to cite medical discussions of the use of the ketogenic diet for weight loss? As of now, that opportunity is lost. /info/en/?search=Low-carbohydrate_diet#Ketogenic_diet

Kortoso ( talk) 00:38, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

The focus of this article is the dietary epilepsy treatment. We are a hyperlinked encyclopaedia, so the "opportunity" to discuss diets for weight loss that may be ketogenic can be fully explored in another article. -- Colin° ^Talk 08:40, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Look at the sources I added. They specifically describe ketogenic diets, not generic low carb. Steven Walling •  talk 03:24, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Not the medical ketogenic diet; the term has come to be used generically. Also, please see WP:FAOWN and discuss before reinstating content. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

So what article describes ketogenic diets in a non medical setting? There isn't one. Steven Walling •  talk 03:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I think there is, but Colin can better explain which is which. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:33, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Actually, it's built in to the edit notice when you edit the page, but it's at the very bottom and probably gets missed very often.

This article is not about weight loss and body-building diets; it is about the physician-ordered medical nutrition therapy used to treat severe, refractory epilepsy in children by producing very high levels of ketone bodies. Non-medical diets that encourage moderate levels of ketone production are described in the article low-carbohydrate diet.

SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:36, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Your comment

Yeah for context, I added it because the scientific reviews--one of which is literally titled "Ketogenic low-CHO, high-fat diet: the future of elite endurance sport?"--are smart enough to discuss the difference between ketogenic and non-ketogenic LCHF diets and both have been studied fairly extensively. So the sources aren't about weight loss and body building, they're real science about other applications. Steven Walling •  talk 03:38, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but not this specific medical diet, which has to be used under strict medical supervision. Colin will explain better (or you can read through the article if you'd rather not wait for him to show up-- I'm off for the night!). SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 03:44, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok so then the title of the article needs to be changed, to something like "Ketogenic diet (medicine)" or "Ketogenic diets in medicine", because there is clearly scientific literature discussing real application of a ketogenic diet outside medicine, so the flat title is misleading. Just saying "ketogenic diet" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a diet that supplies large amounts of fats, moderate amounts of proteins, and minimal amounts of carbohydrates and that is undertaken for weight loss or to control seizures in treatment-resistant epilepsy" so you can see how the generic title is deceptive. I understand wanting to keep medical information separate from weight loss fad info. Steven Walling •  talk 04:07, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

There are rules about article titles, and for 100 years the dominant subject of "ketogenic diet" was as an epilepsy treatment mainly used in children. Recent years have shown a high interest in related diets for weight loss or sports in adults. There's not really a degree of overlap between those studying and writing about the former and the latter, hence Wikipedia handles them in separate articles too. The "other uses" section exists because (usually neurologists) writing about the KD in epilepsy do briefly note the research into that diet for other neurological disorders. Hence it has WP:WEIGHT here. There isn't really any literature-weight to suggest that when writing about an epilepsy diet, authors also digress into the latest research on sports nutrition or on weight loss.

You and I can see an overlap, but I can also see an overlap between a saline drip and my gran's salty chicken and leek soup. Both will provide the body salt and water nutrients, but the former needs to be sterile and is used in sick people, and the latter merely warmed up and served to anyone. -- Colin° ^Talk 10:35, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

We are writing for here and now, not for 100 years ago. Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia for doctors or people with medical conditions, and the English dictionary disagrees with your definition of scope of the term. Steven Walling •  talk 15:41, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Our encyclopaedia articles are not written such that they cover all possible meanings of a term in one article. I suggest you read some of the MOS about article titles and scope. The content of articles is determined by what reliable sources write about, not by dictionary definitions, and reliable sources do not make a habit of writing about epilepsy treatments and sports nutrition at the same time.

The point about 100 years is that there is a body of literature on the ketogenic diet for epilepsy that is huge and has endured and is still very much relevant. This isn't a historical treatment.

I accept that some readers will encounter this article while expecting to read about weight loss or sports diets. That is not a unique problem, and I guess most people searching about "Apple" are interested in the tech company, not the fruit. We can't please everyone. There's more discussion about this in the archives. -- Colin° ^Talk 18:08, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

The preponderance of reliable source material most definitely does not justify zero coverage of non-medical diet interventions on the main article about ketogenic diets. Even just this one narrative review from 2020 in the Journal of Physiology notes that there is over 40 years of peer-reviewed research on the topic of ketogenic diets in sports nutrition. WP:TITLE clearly states that "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles" so when there are decades of peer-reviewed studies (not to mention lay literature) with the term "ketogenic diet" in reference to non-medical interventions your argument for zero coverage doesn't hold water, unless the article is titled specifically in reference to medical treatment. Steven Walling •  talk 18:43, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

You aren't looking at the right thing. There are 46 years of literature about Apple Inc. and yet weirdly there is zero coverage (beyond the hatnote) of computers and mobile phones in our apple article. This is because when reliable sources write about round fruit, they don't write paragraphs about little black rectangles with rounded corners. It isn't the quantity of articles that counts, but the fact that they are independent of each other.

If you think there is merit in expanding this article to discuss all diets that are wholly or partly ketogenic, and used for any purpose in any population group, then we need to know the literature that actually does that? This would be literature that thinks there is a core subject of "ketogenic diet" that is worth talking about in all its various forms. The closest I've found is Ketogenic Diet and Metabolic Therapies: Expanded Roles in Health and Disease which spends 9 pages out of 408 talking about sports nutrition (and 13 pages on diabetes). The rest is neurology and nearly all of that epilepsy. That's one book. Pretty much everything else I've seen is solely neurological with anything other than epilepsy as a briefly mentioned research matter, or similarly focused on sports or on weight loss or life extension or recipes or whatever.

Merging topics that the reliable sources keep distinct is bad for many reasons but a big one is original research. It makes it too likely that we'd claim something was true of "ketogenic diets" but in fact was only true of one kind of ketogenic diet in one kind of population group.

Currently, this article is not the "main topic" on ketogenic diet because the literature does not support the idea of there being a main topic. -- Colin° ^Talk 20:45, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

"Currently, this article is not the "main topic" on ketogenic diet because the literature does not support the idea of there being a main topic" Right, which is why this should be specifically titled to refer to "(medicine)" or "in medicine" and then have a "Ketogenic and low carbohydrate diets" article about non-medical applications. I agree the split makes sense, but what doesn't is the current article title that reads like it's generic. Steven Walling •  talk 03:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

We do not always add qualifiers after an article title just because there are subjects that could be in scope for that title. Please read the MOS on this. There is a reason apple (fruit) or Houston, Texas are redirects. Neither are the "main topic" on all things named "apple" or all dwellings called "Houston". -- Colin° ^Talk 07:20, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

You don't need a qualifier for apple because the scope of the article matches the general understanding of the term. That's not the case here. The scope of the article is a specific medical application that's covered a lot in medical literature and isn't actually the commonly understood definition. Steven Walling •  talk 08:29, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

And what do you think is the "commonly understood definition"? Could we write an article for that? Perhaps your view is influenced by how you got here (diets for exercise). See Wikipedia:Disambiguation. There isn't an algorithm for this. All choices have costs and benefits. While adding a qualifier to the name might appeal to your desire for precision, it has a cost in terms of searching and linking to this page, and it isn't like we have significant alternative articles like "ketogenic diet (sports medicine)" or "ketogenic diet (weight loss)" or "ketogenic diet (wellness fad)" to link to. We do have Keto diet that is a DAB page and uses a common short form of the name, and despite all the interest in directing readers towards content about sports or weight loss uses of a "ketogenic diet", we don't have any significant content that has been written about it. I wonder why. -- Colin° ^Talk 10:01, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

The commonly defined meaning in sources is clearly "a diet that produces ketones" and there are various reasons why an individual would adhere to the diet. It's only your obsession with a focus on the medical application that excludes 100% of other ketogenic diet applications, not the source material. Steven Walling •  talk 05:55, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps revisit that remark ? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 07:17, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if at this point we are going round in circles. The "source material" does not cover all diets that produce ketones. Each source covers one aspect of the diet, that those authors are "obsessed" about, not me. If there were books and books and articles and articles that each covered "a diet that produces ketones" as a whole topic and comprehensively discussed contrasted and compared all the different uses of such diets then sure, ketogenic diet could mirror that. But there aren't and so we don't. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:58, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

A literature search for reliable sources on "ketogenic diet" overwhelmingly returns articles on epilepsy and the conditions listed in the article under the heading "Other medical applications". [1] There is little of value to a featured article on "other applications". We can only write what can be verified by reliable sources. Until sources are found, which I doubt exist, there is indeed no point in "going round in circles", in my view. Graham Beards ( talk) 08:28, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by this. "Ketogenic diet (medical treatment for epilepsy)" and "Ketogenic diet (weight-loss intervention)" are the same actual diet, are they not? By contrast, "Apple (company)" and "Apple (fruit)" are completely different things. Or are they two different diets?

If they are the same food recommendations, then they are the same thing and surely belong in the same article? On the other hand, if they are different sets of food recommendations, then fair enough, they're not the same diet. — Ashley Y 05:52, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Ashley Y, there's some info in the FAQ at the top of the talk page. Yes they are more closely related than those two examples. They have some things in common but while both might seek very few carbs, they vary a lot on protein, which is typically high on a weight loss or body-builder diet (to make you feel full and slow release energy, or to build muscle) but set only at a "necessary for growth" level for the epilepsy diet. And clearly on one, the purpose is weight loss (or muscle gain) in a fully developed body, whereas on the the other, which is typically used in children, the aim is normal growth and the weight gain that goes with that. The biggest issue which keeps the articles from merging is that our sources do not (other than as an aside) talk about them together. So all the stuff here about how the diet is started, monitored, side effects, health benefits, are very much only drawn from medical practice and research on epilepsy diets. If we combined in the weight loss and body building (of which there are numerous variants) then we'd find it very hard to not mislead the reader in thinking some fact applied to that but which we only really know applies to very sick children with epilepsy. WP:SYNTH. -- Colin° ^Talk 12:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Ketogenic diet/Archive 6
Testing for ketone bodies in urine
Pronunciation	/ˌkiːtəʊˈd͡ʒɛnɪk/
Specialty	Neurology, endocrinology
Uses	Refractory paediatric epilepsy
Complications	Stunted growth, bone fractures, kidney stones, constipation, dyslipidemia, dysmenorrhea, low-grade acidosis
Approach	Dietary intervention
Outcomes	Seizure reduction
[ edit on Wikidata

I haven't found any previous discussions about adding an infobox in the archives. This is the only FA-class disease or therapy article connected to WikiProject Medicine that doesn't have an infobox, which makes it a bit unusual. On the other hand, there's no rule requiring one. Do we want an infobox at the top of this article? It could look something like this. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:42, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I think when the article was developed, many medical infoboxes looked like the one at Hepatorenal syndrome: a list of codes only a medical professional would care about (on a project no medical professional should trust to get codes from) and all external links. I'm not sure what the above example is offering the general reader. It is such a primary region of the article, I'm loathe to distract the reader with stuff that isn't jump-out-at-you vital and easy to describe. Our lead sentence is more lay-friendly than "Refractory paediatric epilepsy" and if you know what epilepsy is, then the outcome should be obvious. We know it is a dietary intervention from the article title and lead sentence already. The "complications" are listed in a take-it-or-leave-it form, rather than explaining their frequency or degree of seriousness. One might imagine stunted-growth could be dwarfism but is more subtle than that (and may resolve when the child comes off the diet). Btw, Water fluoridation doesn't have one either, though whether that is a medical therapy is up for debate. -- Colin° ^Talk 13:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

You are correct about the history of the infobox. I don't feel strongly either way myself. It's normal for disease articles to have an infobox, but it's not required.

I don't think that infoboxes need to contain solely vital information. The contents I've mocked up here are just an example. A lot of them have little more than the specialty identified. I think, for this article, that the "Uses" line might help reinforce the not-about-the-fad-diet theme (as could the "Complications" list). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 14:55, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I thought the same about the "Uses". Graham Beards ( talk) 17:22, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

The "not-about-the-fad-diet" is only really a problem with editors. Readers already get a hat note and the lead sentence is pretty clear what the topic is. And we have a FAQ for the editors, should any of them care to read it. I'm not keen to have either medical jargon (uses) or a frightening list of complications just to scare off the health fad folk and say "this is a serious medical intervention for a serious medical condition".

I think that we have done everything we can to highlight to readers and editors what the scope is, without distracting readers who want to learn about this medical intervention. What we know is that editors who want this article to be about the fad diet, don't and won't care what the article says or what we write in a faq, because they either don't read it or think it is wrong. -- Colin° ^Talk 07:29, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Do you think that infoboxes are distracting? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 00:19, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

You didn't ask me, but, yes. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:33, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes but distraction isn't always bad, if the content is worth grabbing someone's attention for. Magazines frequently publish pictures and captions to grab a reader's attention and draw them to consider reading the body text. I can't think of any other publication aimed at general readers that would squander the real-estate at the top of the article to include a list of jargon terms and medical codes. -- Colin° ^Talk 19:05, 8 May 2023 (UTC)