Dr. Kim Williams, the past President of the American College of Cardiology, previously said no one should follow the diet. But now he has added a caveat - saying the plant-based option can theoretically be healthy

Dr. Kim Williams says an animal-free keto diet can be healthy (Photo: Plant Based News)

A leading cardiologist has said the keto diet can be healthy - as long as its vegan.

The keto diet involves eating large amounts of fat and very few carbs, in a bid to get the body into ketosis (a state where it is burning fat for energy). Fans of the diet tout its ability to aid weight loss and improve certain markers around cardiovascular disease.

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Dr. Kim Williams, the past President of the American College of Cardiology, previously said that no one should do the diet unless they care more about weight loss than health in an exclusive interview with Plant Based News. But now he has added a caveat.

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Vegan keto diet

Now, in a new exclusive interview with PBN, Dr. Williams has clarified his position."I would modify what I said," he revealed. "There was a great article published in September in Lancet Public Health that supported what I was saying apart from one thing, and I would always like to put the caveats in there if they are based in good hard science.

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"That caveat was, if you're doing a ketogenic diet with plants, it is not unsafe. And so when I said no one should be doing a ketogenic diet, if I'd had two months of advance notice, I would have said no one should be doing a ketogenic diet with animal products.

"It turns out it does decrease mortality, and it does make perfect sense that if you have something like a ketogenic diet that can lower your weight, and can improve your diabetes, and where you're not adding plaque and cholesterol, and heme iron, trimethylamine, and IGF-1 in large quantities and all of the things that happen when you're eating an animal-based diet, that you would have good long-term outcome. So maybe a ketogenic diet would be ok - as long as you're not eating animals."

You can watch the full interview on YouTube here

