Talk:Ketogenic diet/FAQ


 * Isn't this the trendy keto diet that's in the news?
 * No. The typical minimum fat content for most kids on this diet is more than the maximum fat content for adults who are on the very most extreme keto diets for weight loss and other goals.  Most adults on a "keto" diet plan for 60% to 80% of calories from fat (and then they cheat).  Most kids on this diet get 90% of their calories from fat (80% of their food by weight), and cheating has potentially deadly consequences.  The sample menu shown at Ketogenic diet contains about 150 grams of fat, 25 grams of protein, and 10 grams of carbohydrates (including fiber).  The very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet typically recommends up to 50 grams of total carbohydrates per day, with 50 to 100 grams of protein.


 * Why doesn't this article talk about weight-loss or bodybuilding diets? Bodybuilders call their diets "ketogenic".
 * Any diet that metabolizes any fat at all is "ketogenic", because ketones are the natural, unavoidable metabolic byproduct of eating fat. Even everyday, normal diets are "ketogenic" at some level.  This article is not about weight loss or body building, which produce higher levels of ketones than typical diets, but far lower levels than this medically supervised treatment for epilepsy.  The average diet for epilepsy usually produces 150% of the ketones that even an extreme diet for weight loss or bodybuilding does.  If you are interested in those diets, please read Low-carbohydrate diet.


 * Why doesn't this article talk about Inuit dietary practices? They ate a lot of fat during part of the year.
 * This article is not about the Inuit diet. This article is only about the medical diet for treating epilepsy.  The diet for epilepsy eats far more fat than even the highest estimates for the Inuit diet.  The Inuit diet is estimated to have included high levels of fat, amounting to 25% to 35% of the food by weight.  A typical diet to treat epilepsy is 80% fat by weight, which is more than double the amount in the Inuit diet.


 * Lots of diets have been called "ketogenic" since 2015. Why did you pick this name for an epilepsy treatment?
 * The process for writing articles on Wikipedia is:
 * Pick a subject – in this case, an extremely strict dietary treatment for epilepsy.
 * Look at high-quality reliable sources about your subject to identify possible names for the subject – in this case, "ketogenic diet" is the most widely used name for this treatment for epilepsy, and has been for the last century.
 * Determine whether the common name used by sources is already used for another article – it wasn't, so we used it. Note that this article was named in 2004, a full decade before the "keto" diet trend started.