Low Fat Diet and Heart Disease?

Boo Chanco writes in his Demand and Supply Philstar column today that "Low-fat diet won’t stop cancer or heart disease."

He cites a New York Times article that says a Low-Fat Diet Won't Stop Cancer or Heart Disease.

But before you go out and eat to your heart's content, please take note that:

The $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.

Looks like it was a case of too little, too late? What happens if you go on a low-fat diet when you're still in your 30s or 40s? Boo Chanco also shared the views of his sister (a doctor):

My sister wrote back "the analysis is correct. I suspect that one really has to be on a very low-fat diet to make a difference and most normal people can’t really do that. What remains unexplained is why Asian women living in Asia have low breast cancer rates while Asian women in mainland US have the same rates as Caucasians. Asian women in Hawaii have an incidence between the two. It makes diet suspect."

Check out Boo Chanco's Low-fat diet won’t stop cancer or heart disease to find out what his late father (a doctor) told him when Boo got his first high blood cholesterol tests. (That's a Philstar webpage, so if it disappears in the near future, try searching for the cached copy in Google.)

[ First posted on 02/10/2006 by Manuel Viloria ]