NEWS ANALYSIS - February 9, 2006
Confused by recent diet news? A study entitled “Low-Fat Dietary Patterns and Risk of Invasive Breast Cancer” just released by the Women’s Health Initiative and reported in the February 8 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), generated a flurry of misleading headlines in the general media. Leads such as “Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds” in the New York Times and “Low-Fat Diet's Benefits Rejected” in the Washington Post have left a lot of people scratching their heads. Before you throw up your hands, take a look at an article that places this research in perspective and another that does an excellent job explaining what this study does and doesn’t say. The first is an editorial in the same issue of JAMA in which the study was reported entitled“Dietary Modification and CVD Prevention: A matter of fat” by Drs Cheryl Anderson and Lawrence Appel of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The second is a column Newsweek this week by nutrition expert, Dr. Dean Ornish explaining why all low-fat diets are not the same.
Check our extensive resource list on the links between nutrition and chronic disease.
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