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EDITORIAL: Low-Fat Diet Still Best

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Mar. 1--COMMON sense suggests that it would be foolish to stop eating food low in fat, even though a new research report called "the Rolls-Royce of studies" reveals few health benefits of a low-fat diet for women over 50.

For many years doctors have told most patients, regardless of gender, that low-fat diets will help them avoid various types of heart disease and cancers. It's difficult to imagine that physicians and a health-conscious public would now ignore what's still good nutritional advice.

Researchers are right to worry that the results of the eight-year, $415 million study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, will make the public cynical about health advice. Unfortunately, that's exactly what it will do. The study, labeled the largest and most definitive of its type, offers clear evidence that such diets do not protect older women from heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, or colon cancer.

Its subjects were 50,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79. Obviously, they were well into middle age by the time the study began. Is it any surprise, then, that the results showed no advantage toward avoiding certain health risks, since for years the women had not necessarily been living the healthiest of lifestyles?

If the public becomes confused and upset about findings in the study, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, it will merely reflect the debate in the medical community.

Although some of the investigators say its results no longer justify recommending a low-fat diet, other scientists are convinced that a low-fat diet and one rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains is still a key to good health.

To achieve that goal, they sensibly insist on exercising regularly and avoiding smoking. Basically, the study's critics say that a person must maintain an overall healthful lifestyle because total focus on diet will only accomplish so much.

Jacques Rossouw of the heart, lung, and blood institute correctly defends the study when he says the nature of science is to have "incremental gains and setbacks. We have a duty as scientists to put the best information out there at any given time, even if it can become confusing at times."

Perplexing it is, but it should not be so confounding that it will lead reasonable people to throw caution to the wind and start eating foods high in fat content as if there were no tomorrow. Do that long enough and there won't be.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Blade

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