Health Insurance Daily

Cutting The Fat Won't Cut It

A major new study discounts the protective benefits of a low-fat diet

Sticking to a low-fat diet isn't easy: It means salad dressing with more vinegar than oil, ballgames but no peanuts, and summer afternoons without any ice cream.

Yet for years, many people have been forgoing such pleasures in the belief that cutting fat automatically cuts the risk of heart disease and cancer, too.

Not so, says research published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women who trimmed the fat from their diets were just as vulnerable to colon cancer, breast cancer, and heart disease as women who did not.

The message? A low-fat diet isn't equivalent to a healthful diet, says Marcia Stefanick, a physiologist at Stanford University's Prevention Research Center, who helped run the government-sponsored study.

To read this article in its entirety, click on U.S News and World Report.

posted by Mike @ 12:35 AM