Nick NorwitzMD PhD, Oxford-Harvard | Metabolic Health Educator | “Stay Curious”

What If a Reese’s Counted as Low Carb?

11 Oct 2025 · 1 min

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This content was created by Nick Norwitz. This content was uploaded by Nick Norwitz. This is a YouTube video titled "What If a Reese’s Counted as Low Carb?" (created 2025-10-11). The excerpt is a single-speaker commentary/reaction in English criticizing a recent study that labeled diets with ~40% of calories from carbohydrates as "low carb." The speaker argues that 40% is not low-carb (contrasting it with therapeutic low-carb <20% and ketogenic ≈5%), calls out misleading headlines and influencers, and warns that such distortion can harm patients (particularly people with diabetes) who might benefit from carbohydrate-restricted diets.

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What if a Reese's peanut butter cup counted as low carb? What if eating that delicious Reese's could get you shredded, insulin sensitive, and healthy? Now, as ridiculous as that sounds— well, it is, it's totally ridiculous— but it's sort of what a new study did. Researchers labeled diets with 40% calories from carbs as "low carbs." That's not low carb, that is candy-level carbs. But they got away with it in the public eye by transfiguring real carb intake into some abstract low-carb score. So actual carb intake, that 40%, was obscured. Real low-carb diets are under 20%, and ketogenic diets are near 5% calories from carbs. So all this is the same as if I held up a bologna sandwich and called it a plant-based meal because it's only 40% processed meat. Yet headlines still ran and misfluencers yelled "low-carb diets don't help diabetes" off of this ridiculous study. Here's the real problem and the reason I'm reacting. When studies and headlines distort like this, patients who could actually benefit from therapeutic carbohydrate restriction are told it doesn't work. And that's not just misleading, it's harmful. What do you think?