Eat Well, Live Long
I read this article yesterday, in the NY Times dead tree edition, and shook my head. Here’s the headline: Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds.
Based on what an MD friend of mine told me over two decades ago about human evolution and diets, the best diet is a Pleistocene diet. Few raw sugars, meat, fat, ruffage, eggs, boiled roots, etc. In other words, be an omnivore and cut out candy.
The doctor pointed out that fat is literally “brain food.”
Oh yes, the lede from the Times article:
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.
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.
“We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue,” he said.
The results, the study investigators agreed, do not justify recommending low-fat diets to the public to reduce their heart disease and cancer risk…
UPDATE: Go to Daniel Drezner’s post which links to an Americn Cancer Society press release on cancer deaths.
This is not the first time I’ve heard this or heard athletes discuss feeling better after adding a steak to their high complex carb diets. Historical factoid: Lewis and Clark ate approximately 7 pounds of wild game a day on their exploration of the Louisiana purchase and did not become seriously ill until having to abruptly shift to roots and plants in a section of the Rockies.
Comment by mark safranski — 2/10/2006 @ 7:54 am