Keto diet cut liver fat by 67% in clinical trial — SkimNews
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- Ketogenic diet reduced liver fat by 67% compared with 45% for Mediterranean and plant-forward low-fat diets in a 42-person trial where all three groups lost about 10% of body weight over four to five months.
- About 50% of keto participants no longer met the criteria for prediabetes after the intervention, versus 29% on the Mediterranean diet and 7% on the low-fat, plant-forward diet.
- Keto participants showed the largest rise in glucagon — a hormone that reduces fat stored in the liver — and the greatest decline in blood insulin levels, while the keto diet supplied just 4% of calories from carbohydrates and 73% from fat.
- Max Petersen, first author at Washington University School of Medicine, said the surprising finding was that keto participants experienced no increase in blood fat or cholesterol levels despite consuming the most fat of any group.
- Samuel Klein, the study's corresponding author at Washington University, said reducing carbohydrate intake provides therapeutic metabolic effects beyond weight loss alone for people with high liver fat and prediabetes.
- The trial was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and was published August 27, 2026 in Cell Metabolism.
Why it matters: For the roughly 40% of US adults with obesity — many of whom also have fatty liver and prediabetes — the trial suggests diet composition matters beyond calorie restriction: keto cut liver fat by an extra 22 percentage points and reversed prediabetes in roughly twice as many participants as Mediterranean eating. With GLP-1 drugs reshaping obesity pharmacotherapy, the findings position specific dietary composition as a potential additive lever rather than a replacement.
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