Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Healthy diets: a fat lot of good

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 US $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today in JAMA.

“These studies are revolutionary,” said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. “They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy.”

Insider loves iconoclastic studies like this one. Much of "scientific belief" is, in fact, dogma.

Insider is reminded of Schopenhauer: 'All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is opposed. Third it is accepted as being self evident.'

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