Study: Low-Fat Diet Big Letdown
Data On Older Women: It Hardly Mattered Vs. Some Cancers, Heart Disease
-
Play CBS Video Video Are Low-Fat Diets Ineffective? New research shows that a low-fat diet may not have any significant health benefits, especially for post-menopausal women. Dr. Emily Senay explained the shocking results of the 8-year study.
-
Video HealthWatch Melissa McDermott reports on a study that says low-fat diets may not reduce cancer risks in older women, encouraging long-term signs for premature infants, and calcium deficiency in kids and teens.
-
Video Is Cutting The Fat Overrated? A study on the link between a low-fat diet and disease in women has turned up results that seem to challenge conventional wisdom. Elizabeth Kaledin has more.
-
(AP/CBS)
-
Interactive Diet And Nutrition Are you eating right? See the government's guidelines, calculate your body mass index and quiz yourself on healthy food choices.
-
Interactive Cancer Learn about the most common cancers, who gets them and how they are treated.
-
Interactive Heart Disease Learn more about different types of heart disease, explore different treatments and assess your own risk.
Still, Manson said, the results "are somewhat disappointing. We would have liked this dietary intervention to have a major impact on health."
The diet-group women cut overall fat consumption and increased vegetables, fruits and grains. The other group continued their usual eating habits.
The study is part of the Women's Health Initiative, a landmark government project involving tens of thousands of postmenopausal U.S. women. An earlier WHI study linked long-term use of hormone pills with breast cancer and heart disease risks.
The new study was designed mainly to investigate breast cancer risk. Dietary fat was initially thought to be implicated because breast cancer rates are high in Western countries with fatty diets, but recent studies have failed to show any relationship, said Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society.
Recent research also has suggested that for breast cancer in particular, earlier eating habits may have the most influence on risk. Another target was colon cancer, which some studies have linked with red meat.
Breast cancer rates in both groups were about 3 percent, marginally higher than for postmenopausal women in the general U.S. population, probably because these women got routine mammograms, said study investigator Ross Prentice of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Colon cancer rates in both groups were similar to national rates for similarly aged women — roughly 1 percent in both groups.
Both groups had relatively low rates of heart disease, about 2.5 percent compared with just over 4 percent among postmenopausal women nationally, Prentice said.
What are the implications for men?
"Probably the same for colorectal cancer and heart disease," Senay said, "because the disease processes are very similar."
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More From Health
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
