Being the offshoot of ancestors who had afflictions I would sorely like to avoid, I was disappointed by the news of a recent study which purported to debunk the theory that avoiding fat would help protect a person against heart attacks and cancer.
Last week the New York Times published an article about a paper that one of their quotes described as the Rolls Royce of studies on fat intake. The study involved 49,000 women, and those in the test group were supposed to have reduced their fat intake over a period of eight years. The conclusion was that those who had reduced their fat intake had cancer and heart attacks at about the same rate as the control group.
The results, the study investigators agreed, do not justify recommending low-fat diets to the public to reduce their heart disease and cancer risk. Given the lack of benefit found in the study, many medical researchers said that the best dietary advice, for now, was to follow federal guidelines for healthy eating, with less saturated and trans fats, more grains, and more fruits and vegetables.
Leave it to Dean Ornish to chew it up and spit it out. Take a closer look at the study, he says. He points out that the participants reduced their fat intake to 29% of their diet, but that was not enough difference from the control group.
But most importantly, there was no distinction among the different kinds of fat. Animal fat is supposed to be much worse for us than fish fat -- four legs bad, no legs good. However, trans fat is supposed to be the worst of all. But the study made no distinction.
The good news about trans fat is that food labels now show that most products are trans fat free, which means that the trans fat in the product is at or below the maximum allowed to qualify for the trans fat free designation.
So we are left with the decision of whether or not to follow the USDA's recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005:
FATS -- Key Recommendations
Consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids and less than 300 mg/day of cholesterol, and keep trans fatty acid consumption as low as possible.
Keep total fat intake between 20 to 35 percent of calories, with most fats coming from sources of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, such as fish, nuts, and vegetable oils.
When selecting and preparing meat, poultry, dry beans, and milk or milk products, make choices that are lean, low-fat, or fat-free.
Limit intake of fats and oils high in saturated and/or trans fatty acids, and choose products low in such fats and oils.
Okay, I'll keep trying. On the one hand it would be a joy to be able to eat high fat foods guilt free. But, if it's true that fat intake is meaningless to our health then it means that we are really helpless against these diseases. And from inception on, we are force-marched down a path laid out by our genetic code. That idea is disturbing, and I'm not ready to accept that, at least not competely.
So I'm going to try to stay with the low fat foods and avoid the trans fat. But if it doesn't work, at my wake please help yourself to the snacks, guilt free. Those Swedish meat balls will be delicious!