The End of The Low Fat Diet?

Many of you may have heard of a recent study in Lancet (Published: 29 August 2017

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32252-3

on-line) where researchers reviewed the diet history of thousands of people in 18 countries and looked at death rates. Though there may some issues with the study, the results were that low fat diets resulted in higher risk of premature death as compared with low carbohydrates.

The dietary fat dogma started more than a century ago with some meat-eating rabbits.

Back in 1908, scientists noticed that rabbits who were fed high cholesterol diets (meat, eggs, milk) developed plaque in their arteries. It was the beginning of a diet-heart hypothesis that reached full flower in the 1950s when researcher Ancel Keys convinced the world that diets high in saturated fat increased the risk of heart disease.

Lately there have been several studies that suggest moderation is the key. In fact there were even two studies never published in the 70's that also argued against the low fat diet hypothesis; the data was recently re-analyzed - BMJ 2013;346:e8707 from 1973 study data: In this cohort, substituting dietary linoleic acid in place of saturated fats increased the rates of death from all causes, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular disease.

Bottom line - healthy diet, moderation, and (in my opinion) avoid highly processed foods!