I’m sure by now a lot of you have seen the NY Times article about Low Fat Diet does not cut health risk, study finds. The problem with the study is that the ‘low fat’ diet studied is not really low fat.
Throughout the article the terms low-fat and high-fat are thrown around without defining it. Finally, five paragraphs from the end of the article, they tell you what ‘low fat’ meant.
(quote copyright 2006 NY Times, emphasis mine)
In the first year, the women on the low-fat diets reduced the percentage of fat in their diet to 24 percent of daily calories, and by the end of the study their diets had 29 percent of their calories as fat. In the first year, the women in the control group were eating 35 percent of their calories as fat, and by the end of the study their dietary fat content was 37 percent. The two groups consumed about the same number of calories.
Almost 30 percent of fat in your diet is not ‘low fat’. Something more in the area of 10-15 percent is low fat. That kind of diet DOES help reduce your health risk. This is just irresponsible science. It’s like doing a study where smokers cut down from 20 a day to 17 and wondering why the death rate from lung cancer doesn’t go down.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who wrote the wonderful book, Eat to Live, has written an excellent rebuttal article. Please go read it and find out what really works!
Barbara