Study Suggests Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks
A series of studies
characterized as "revolutionary" seem to show that low fat diets do not
reduce the health risks from diseases such as Breast Cancer, Colorectal
Cancer, and Cardiovascular Disease. This shocking news was reported in
the February 8, 2006 issue of the New York Times, and was originally
published as three separate but related studies in the February 8, 2006
issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA).
These studies were part of a
very large US federal study costing $415 million and included 49,000
women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. The researchers
reported that those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast
cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever
they pleased. The results of this study shocked not only the medical
community, but even the researchers themselves.
Dr.
Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New
York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight
and health, stated, "These studies are revolutionary. They should put a stop
to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change
the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."
Dr. Michael Thun, who directs
epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, chimed in on the
validity of this large study by classifying this study as, "the
Rolls-Royce of studies", and saying, "We usually have only one shot at a
very large-scale trial on a particular issue."
According to the New York
Times the study investigators agreed that low-fat diets to the public to
reduce their heart disease and cancer risk was no longer justified.
There are however, opponents
to the study. Dr. Dean Ornish, a longtime promoter of low-fat diets and
president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito,
California, disagrees and stated that the women in the study did not reduce
their fat to low enough levels or eat enough fruits and vegetables. He also
argued that the study, even though eight years long, did not give the low
fat diets enough time to show effect.
Barbara V. Howard, an
epidemiologist at MedStar Research Institute, a nonprofit hospital group,
and a principle investigator in the study, said, "We are not going to
reverse any of the chronic diseases in this country by changing the
composition of the diet. People are always thinking it's what they ate. They
are not looking at how much they ate or that they smoke or that they are
sedentary"
At the end of the New York
Times article, Dr. Nanette K. Wenger, a cardiologist and professor of
medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta summed up the
findings by saying, "What we are saying is that a modest reduction of fat
and a substitution with fruits and vegetables did not do anything for heart
disease and stroke or breast cancer or colorectal cancer." She then
placed this in context by adding the comment, "It doesn't say that this diet
is not beneficial." |