The most significant result of the $415 million study is that low-fat diets don’t reduce heart disease risk. As the researchers put it, “Over [an average] of 8.1 years, a dietary intervention that reduced total fat intake and increased intake of vegetables, fruits and grains did not significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women and achieved only modest effects on cardiovascular risk factors. . . .”These results are quite a blow to the Diet-Government Complex, that constellation of pharmaceutical companies, food processors, and government bureaucrats that have been pushing low-fat, high-carb diets on us for years. This has been a thoroughly politicized process from the start. (See this New York Times Magazine article, "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?") As Malloy points out, the other major studies have consistently failed to support the fat-cholesterol-heart-disease hypothesis, but the results were always spun to distract attention from the facts. And the news media has always been too willing to merely reprint the press releases.
Low-fat diets didn’t even improve heart health among the population of women who had heart disease at the beginning of the study. In fact, the low-fat diet regimen was associated with a slightly increased risk of heart disease among these women.
For the scoop on such things, visit the website of The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics . I'd also recommend Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's book, The Cholesterol Myths.
Somewhere up there, Dr. Atkins is smiling.
As Emeril Lagasse says, "Pork fat rules!"
This might be persuasive if there were no other studies. But all the major studies show only the weakest correlations between dietary fat/cholesterol and heart disease. This is true of the Framingham studies and the big nurses study. Malloy discusses this. Ravnskov's book goes over these and others at great length.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there is evidence that fat, including saturated fat, and cholesterol are protective of health, especially in older people. Framingham confirmed that.
It's always possible to say that people who did not achieve the expected results didn't reduce their fat intake enough, but after years of studies that fail to sustain the hypothesis, the best move might be to give it up.