Low Fat is Out -- Government Study

In the largest study ever conducted into the efficacy of low-fat
dieting the result is finally out. No difference. As Gina Kolata writes in The New York Times:

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect.

The Washington Post agrees.

Low-fat diets do not protect women against heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer or colon cancer, a major study has found, contradicting what had once been promoted as one of the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle.

OK. So now what? Do we shut down the whole government enterprise that advises us about our eating? Do we stop the legal assault on fast food?
The biggest question of all is, do women now obsess about something else? For over a generation we have encouraged women to think that they can control their weight (i.e., attractiveness) by fiddling with the foods that they eat. Now we learn that the big deal, the low-fat diet, does not have any effect on health. Not really. Not so it would make a significant difference to a woman’s life.

In fact, the likelihood is that low-fat dieting actually has a negative effect on a woman’s life and her family’s life.

Women obsess about health issues for a very good reason. Health is related to survival and women are interested in anything that improves survival for their loved ones. That is why, if you listen to the conversation of two women friends out for a walk, the chances are that they are talking about health issues.

But if women have been putting energy into low-fat dieting and low-fat dieting has no effect on health then they have been wasting their energy. They have been doing the familial equivalent of leaf raking.

The New York Times is not yet ready to throw in the towel on dieting.

The results, the study investigators agreed, do not justify recommending low-fat diets to the public to reduce their heart disease and cancer risk. Given the lack of benefit found in the study, many medical researchers said that the best dietary advice, for now, was to follow federal guidelines for healthy eating, with less saturated and trans fats, more grains, and more fruits and vegetables.

And the editorialists at the Times agree:

Meanwhile, experts in nutrition and chronic diseases have moved on to a new consensus: it is not the total fat but the kind of fat you eat that is important. Many groups recommend that people cut their intake of "bad" fats, like saturated fats and trans fats, and increase their intake of "good" fats, like those found in vegetable and fish oils.

But before we give such unsubstantiated advice, and encourage women to put enormous energy into feeding their families “less saturated and trans fats, more grains, and more fruits and vegetables,” shouldn’t we do a study?

Could it be that food is food and that, if we just relax and enjoy it, we’ll live just as long as the obsessive dieter next door? As the Times says, by the time any long-term study on “good” and “bad” fats gets done, the “nutrition experts might have moved on to yet another approach.”