Study : Less Fat May Not Lower Cancer Risk

Funny. All the assessments I heard of this study say the important word
"alone."
In other words as I keep saying, you have to exercise to be healthy. Diet
alone isn't going to change a damned thing.


"Ignoramus3308" wrote in message
...
This highly amusing article sheds some light on the fact that
recommendation to "eat low fat to be healthy" is based on nothing
besides wishful thinking.

I think that we are getting closer to the "heart establishment"to
admit just that.

Highlight: ``The eight-year study showed no difference in the rate of
breast cancer, colon cancer and heart disease among those who ate
lower-fat diets and those who didn't.''

I am quoting one article in full at the bottom, but you may want to
see some additional articles:

Major new study shows low-fat diet largely pointless
``WASHINGTON (AFP) - It turns out that all the suffering and privation
could have been in vain.''
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060208...h_060208142337

Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds
``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.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/health/08fat.html

It must be noted that at least one article in JAMA
(http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/6/629) does not present
conclusions quite as simple as reported by those media headlines, but
by and large there is no big overall effect of fat reduction on
disease rates.

################################################## ####################

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/...sappointment_7

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
Tue Feb 7, 11:01 PM ET

CHICAGO - Eating less fat late in life failed to lower the risk of
cancer and heart disease among older women, disappointing news for
those who expected greater benefits from a healthy diet.
ADVERTISEMENT


Even so, scientists say the results from the government study of
48,835 women don't mean dieters should just throw up their hands and
eat cake.

Researchers suggested that the women in the long-running study ? with
an average age of 62 ? may have started their healthy eating too
late. They also didn't reduce fats as much as the diet demanded, and
most remained overweight, a major risk factor for cancer and heart
problems.

"These results do not suggest that people have carte blanche to eat
fatty foods without health problems," said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of
preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, a
co-author of the study and respected nutrition authority.

The eight-year study showed no difference in the rate of breast
cancer, colon cancer and heart disease among those who ate lower-fat
diets and those who didn't.

But the scientists declined to call the $415 million venture a
failure, pointing to signs of less breast cancer in women who cut out
the most fat, and in less heart disease in women who ate low amounts
of the worst kinds of fats.

Heart and cancer specialists said the overall results were not
surprising since scientific thinking on the role fats play in disease
prevention has evolved since this study was designed. That is
especially true when it comes to good and bad fats and heart disease.

The research involved postmenopausal women who either cut overall fat
consumption and increased vegetables, fruits and grains, or who
continued their usual eating habits. The researchers said the dieters
may not have cut out enough fat for a meaningful comparison. Cancer
and heart disease incidence was similar in both groups.

"The results, of course, are somewhat disappointing. We would have
liked this dietary intervention to have a major impact on health,"
Manson said.

The study, appearing in Wednesday's
Journal of the American Medical Association, is part of the Women's
Health Initiative, a landmark government project involving tens of
thousands of postmenopausal U.S. women. An earlier WHI study linked
long-term use of hormone pills with breast cancer and heart disease
risks.

One of the women in the study, 66-year-old Judy LaCour of Kent, Wash.,
began the low-fat diet more than 10 years ago.

"I was raised in a farm family where high-fat food was the norm,"
LaCour said. "It was a real culture shock for me when I first
started."

But she said she has stuck with the changes and is disease-free. She
also thinks the diet has helped keep her weight down while her friends
have gotten heavier with age.

The study was designed mainly to investigate breast cancer
risk. Dietary fat was initially thought to be implicated because
breast cancer rates are high in Western countries with fatty diets,
but recent studies have failed to show any relationship, said
Dr. Michael Thun of the
American Cancer Society.

Recent research also has suggested that for breast cancer in
particular, earlier eating habits may have the most influence on risk.

Another target was colon cancer, which some studies have linked with
red meat.

Thun said the results aren't surprising because fat in the diet "is no
longer center stage" when it comes to cancer risk. While the Cancer
Society recommends limiting fats, that's primarily because of the
calories, Thun said.

Breast cancer rates in both groups were about 3 percent, marginally
higher than for postmenopausal women in the general U.S. population,
probably because these women got routine mammograms, said study
investigator Ross Prentice of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center. Colon cancer rates in both groups were similar to national
rates for similarly aged women ? roughly 1 percent in both groups.

The researchers assumed that lowering fats would help prevent heart
disease, too, but specialists now stress the differences in
fats. Some, like the kind in olive oil and nuts, are healthier than
the saturated fats and trans fats found in processed and fried foods.

Study participants filled out food questionnaires but might not have
reduced the right kinds of fat, said Dr. Robert Eckel, president of
the
American Heart Association.

"It would be easy to misinterpret the results of this study," he
said.

Both groups had relatively low rates of heart disease, about 2.5
percent compared with just over 4 percent among postmenopausal women
nationally, Prentice said.

Both groups started out with about 37 percent of daily calories from
fat. The goal was to cut that to 20 percent for the low-fat group; the
women managed about 24 percent on average in the first year, but it
climbed to about 29 percent later on, said Dr. Jacques Rossouw, WHI
project officer at the

What's hard to spin away is that this clearly shows that reducing fat
and even reducing saturated fat, as a practical matter, do not reduce
the risk of heart disease or cancer. Here are some of the points
raised in this thread and my reaction:

"But it wasn't a good study, since the data is self reported."

There isn't any alternative, unless you want to lock people up in a lab
for 8 years, is there? These people knew they were part of an
important study and had no particular reason to lie about what they
ate. They also met with dieticians 4 times a year for guidance. This
is far more intervention and motivation than a typical person will ever
have to stay on a diet. Sure it's possible that what they reported
and what they did was exactly the same. But still, two irrefutable
points remain. One is that even with some reporting bias, one would
expect to see some positive effects in the results, instead there were
none at all. And second, IMO, it all doesn;t matter anyway, because
if these people couldn't make low fat work, how could anyone in the
general population be expected to do any better?


"But now we know that there is good fat and bad fat."

This isn't all that new. The study was done over the last 8 years, not
20. Even 8 years ago there was plenty of attention beginning to be
focused on good fat vs bad fat. These people didn;t live in a vacuum
and weren't forced to eat a particular type of fat. It's very
reasonable to expect that those following the low fat approach and
doing what was supposed to be healthy, also tried to use more of the
good fats over much of the course of the study. This even shows up
in the data, where the low fat
group reduced their saturated fat by a large amount and increased their
fruits and vegetables. Yet, there is no reduction in heart disease
or cancer.

"The national weight control registry has similar problems"

There is no comparison at all. The NWCR is a sham with no intention of
even trying to correctly gather data. Many of us went there, took one
look, and quickly concluded there was no way for people on LC to even
correctly enter data. Instead that database is designed to come to
support a conclusion.

We've studied the low fat thing to exhaustion. Maybe now researchers
will finally do a long term study of LC. Even a more modest size study
would be very informative. But. I wouldn't hold my breath.

wrote:
:: What's hard to spin away is that this clearly shows that reducing fat
:: and even reducing saturated fat, as a practical matter, do not reduce
:: the risk of heart disease or cancer. Here are some of the points
:: raised in this thread and my reaction:
::
:: "But it wasn't a good study, since the data is self reported."
::
:: There isn't any alternative, unless you want to lock people up in a
:: lab for 8 years, is there? These people knew they were part of an
:: important study and had no particular reason to lie about what they
:: ate. They also met with dieticians 4 times a year for guidance.
:: This is far more intervention and motivation than a typical person
:: will ever have to stay on a diet. Sure it's possible that what
:: they reported and what they did was exactly the same. But still,
:: two irrefutable points remain. One is that even with some reporting
:: bias, one would expect to see some positive effects in the results,
:: instead there were none at all. And second, IMO, it all doesn;t
:: matter anyway, because if these people couldn't make low fat work,
:: how could anyone in the general population be expected to do any
:: better?
::

Excellent point, Chet. This moreso than anything else, proves that this LF
recommendation was just pulled out of the collective ass of some committee.

::
:: "But now we know that there is good fat and bad fat."
::
:: This isn't all that new. The study was done over the last 8 years,
:: not
:: 20. Even 8 years ago there was plenty of attention beginning to be
:: focused on good fat vs bad fat. These people didn;t live in a vacuum
:: and weren't forced to eat a particular type of fat. It's very
:: reasonable to expect that those following the low fat approach and
:: doing what was supposed to be healthy, also tried to use more of the
:: good fats over much of the course of the study. This even shows
:: up in the data, where the low fat
:: group reduced their saturated fat by a large amount and increased
:: their fruits and vegetables. Yet, there is no reduction in heart
:: disease or cancer.

Right. And if you're eating low fat, then you can't, by definition, be
eating much sat fats. And, of course, since they were eating low fat, so
they weren't eating enough good fats, either. Hence, eating probably hurt
those people as opposed to not helping them.


::
:: "The national weight control registry has similar problems"
::
:: There is no comparison at all. The NWCR is a sham with no intention
:: of even trying to correctly gather data. Many of us went there,
:: took one look, and quickly concluded there was no way for people on
:: LC to even correctly enter data. Instead that database is designed
:: to come to support a conclusion.
::
:: We've studied the low fat thing to exhaustion. Maybe now
:: researchers will finally do a long term study of LC. Even a more
:: modest size study would be very informative. But. I wouldn't hold
:: my breath.

Right. Sad world. We'll have to wait for a whole generation of researchers
to die before something new can show up.