Mediterranean Diet Still Holds a Place in Obesity Treatment Despite the Considerable Effectiveness of the Very Low-Calorie Ketogenic Diet: A Short Communication

Abstract

There has been an escalating incidence of obesity along with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), as well as other co-morbidities so much so that the term diabesity had to be coined for this worldwide epidemic. Different attempts have been done to unravel the etiology of this ever-escalating problem, however, there has been a failure to control it. All the newer combinations like Qsymia (topiramate, phentermine), Contrive (naltrexone: bupropion), liraglutide, etc., have been unsuccessful with either cost prohibitions or side effects/contraindications. Thus, attention had shifted to dietary therapies like high protein diet, the mediterranean diet (MD), and Probiotic therapy. However, none has ensured the sustenance of weight reduction. In 2018, we reviewed how the very-low-calorie ketogenic diet (VLCKD) might be successful not only in obesity therapy but also in correlated endocrine dysfunction. Recently, there has been a lot of resurgence of the use of VLCKD. The authors performed an extensive search on various platforms like PubMed; Google scholar; Web of Science; Embase; Cochrane review library utilizing the MeSH terms; “Obesity/Overweight”; “Various diets MD”; “VLCKD to assess the efficacy of which diet is better” from 1995 till date. Nevertheless, it has been seen that the efficacy of this is not seen uniformly. Thus, the group of Muscogiuri G recently observed that compliance with MD acts in the form of the anticipation of the effectiveness of VLCKD, thus the role of MD in obesity persists because of anti-inflammatory along with antioxidant actions of MD that ensures good ketosis generation.