Fat is Back "in"

I own a poster at home that’s from 1945 and it depicts the “

Food Circle

” from our federal government.  It actually lists a “Food Group” as “Butter and Margarine”.  Then it says… “Eat one from each group and anything else you want” – clearly we’ve gone full circle.  Here’s news today about low fat eating:

A large study on fat and diet has found that a low-fat diet has no added health benefit. The New York Times reports that the study followed nearly 49,000 women and found that women on low-fat diets had similar cancer and heart problems as people who did not follow a low-fat diet.

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.

"These studies are revolutionary," said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at

Rockefeller

University

in

New York City

, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. "They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."

The study, published in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was not just an ordinary study, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. It was so large and so expensive, Dr. Thun said, that it was "the Rolls-Royce of studies." As such, he added, it is likely to be the final word.