Three Answers to the Low-Fat Futility Study

When it appeared two weeks ago, the $415 milliion federal study suggesting that a low-fat diet does virtually nothing to reduce cancer and heart disease was immediately acclaimed as definitive and authoritative. And why not? When you spend that kind of money, you want to believe you’ve got things right, right? Not.  Since we got the bad news about good food, many health and dietary experts have stepped up and taken shots at the findings. Here are three:
The LA Times points out, among other things, that women who ate the most fat when the study began, and therefore reduced
their fat intake by a higher percentage, showed greater reductions in
breast cancer risk — up to 20 percent.
BU Today reminds us that the women in the low-fat diet group were originally supposed to cut
back to eating 20 percent of their calories from fat [from 38 percent],
and they couldn’t do it. They ended up between 24 and 29 percent, which
means a much smaller difference between them and the control. 
And the Washington Post reports that the study’s findings do show that
eating more fruit and vegetables as well as less saturated and trans
fats cuts the risk of heart disease and cancer.
So there.