Low-Fat Diet Doesn't Reduce Diseases in Women
By JENNIFER CORBETT DOOREN
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
February 8, 2006; Page D5
WASHINGTON -- Following a low-fat diet doesn't cut the rate of colon cancer and stroke, nor does it significantly lower the incidence of heart disease and breast cancer, according to a study of postmenopausal women.
But researchers and health experts say the study results shouldn't be viewed as an invitation to adopt a high-fat diet, partly because all of the women were relatively healthy upon enrollment and there was a focus on cutting total fat and not just the "bad" trans or saturated fats.
The study covered eight years and more than 48,000 women who are part of a larger, federally funded study known as the Women's Health Initiative, which researches ways to prevent heart disease, osteoporosis and breast and colon cancer in women. The study was funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, and marks the first time that major diet findings have been released.
The results are being published as three separate studies today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The women in the study, aged 50 to 79, were enrolled starting in 1993. About 40% of the women in the study were assigned to a low-fat diet and about 60% were in the so-called control group, where they ate a normal diet. The low-fat diet group was instructed to eat no more than about 20% of their total calories daily in fat and to strive for five servings of fruits and vegetables and six servings of grains daily.
The other women weren't instructed specifically how to eat but were given some educational materials about a healthy diet. Women in both groups weren't required to exercise or told to restrict total calories to a certain level.
But most women in the low-fat group didn't stick to it. By the six-year mark of the study, the low-fat group was consuming about 29% of total calories from fat and women in the normal diet group averaged about 37% of calories from fat, making for a smaller difference in the two groups than researchers were hoping for.
The study showed that women in the low-fat group had a 9% lower risk of getting breast cancer, but researchers said the finding wasn't statistically significant and could have been due to chance.
Ross Prentice, a researcher and professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington, and other researchers said it is possible that a longer period is needed before any positive impacts of a lower-fat diet would be found on cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
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