Low-fat diets not as effective as expected
A landmark study that set out to prove that cutting fat from the American diet could reduce cardiovascular disease and cancer in women over 50 has come up short, showing no significant changes in risk despite years on reduced-fat regimens.
Nearly 50,000 post-menopausal women were enrolled in the $415 million study. Twenty thousand embarked on years of low-fat dieting, while the rest were allowed to eat as they pleased. They participated in the study from 1993 to the end of 2005.
After an average eight years, the women in the low-fat diet group fared no better than the control group in rates of colorectal cancer, heart disease and stroke. The risk of breast cancer was 9 percent lower among the dieters, but the differences were so slight that statisticians could not rule out the possibility the finding was merely the result of chance.
“People shouldn’t be disappointed by the studies,” said Marcia Stefanick, a Stanford University School of Medicine professor and a co-author of all three papers. “It’s just a wake-up call that simply reducing your total dietary fat is not enough.”
The goal was to compare the health of women on a diet in which fats were lowered to 20 percent of calories consumed with that of the control group, whose consumption hovered around 35 percent of calories from fat.
Yet the women in the study were never, on average, able to reach the 20 percent goal.
To reach that lower level, said cancer specialist Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, dieters not only would have to forgo the skin on chicken, the cream cheese on a bagel and the dressing on salad — they would have to skip the weekend splurge of a hot fudge sundae and the occasional pat of butter on a roll.
–That’s being just a tiny bit too strict. I say induldge withe moderation…and consistent exercise.
Stay Healthy!
