Category Archives: low fat diet

April 12, 2020 · 12:15 am

Why the Low-Fat Diet Failed – Tufts

In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans were told that eating less fat would reduce risk for cardiovascular disease and obesity. Why didn’t it work? Essentially, reducing total fat led to intake of more refined carbohydrates and less healthy fats, and both of these changes had negative health impacts.

grilled salmon fish on rectangular black ceramic plate

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Evolving Guidelines: Dietary advice on fat intake has evolved over the years. Based on strong evidence that diets high in saturated fats and cholesterol were associated with high blood cholesterol levels and a greater risk of heart attack, the 1980 U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommended Americans “avoid too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.” The 1990 Dietary Guidelines added risk for obesity to the list of reasons to cut back on fats. (Since a gram of fat has more than twice the calories of a gram of protein or carbohydrate, reducing fat intake is the fastest way to reduce calorie intake.) But, soon thereafter, data began to emerge that low-fat diets were not having the expected results. “The 2000 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee noted the adverse effects of low-fat diets, and for the first time since their inception changed the guidance from low fat to moderate fat,” says Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, a member of that committee who is now a senior scientist at Tufts’ HNRCA and executive editor of Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter. From 2000 on, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommended consuming a diet moderate in total fat that keeps saturated fat intake to under 10 percent of calories. The 2015 DGA emphasizes consuming foods rich in polyunsaturated fat. Some scientists feel that even this moderate fat restriction goes too far. Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, dean of Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and editor-in-chief of Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter sites evidence that a higher proportion of calories from fat is not harmful for either cardiovascular disease (CVD) or obesity, and in fact can lower risk if healthy (poly- and mono-unsaturated) fats replace refined starches and sugars. Continue reading →

Low-fat diets – a failed experiment – Harvard

I have written numerous times about the nutritional benefits of coconut oil. For starters you can check my Page – Coconut Oil – Why you should include it in your diet. But that is just coconut oil – a saturated fat – but only one kind of fat.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health nutrition expert David Ludwig says that the low-fat diet remains “deeply embedded in public consciousness and food policy.” Recent research suggests that eating a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet—which Americans were advised to do for about 40 years—is not a good idea.

In an October 6, 2016 CNN.com article, Ludwig, professor in the Department of Nutrition, wrote that longstanding recommendations about avoiding dietary fat—from the government and all major professional nutrition associations—were based on limited scientific evidence. Experts who touted a low-fat diet said it would help people stay lean and healthy. But, instead, rates of obesity and diabetes surged.

Experts now say that not all fats are bad—in fact, some are healthy and important in a balanced diet. Several recent studies found that high-fat diets actually produce greater weight loss than low-fat diets. And while the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans have now lifted the limit on dietary fat, “you’d never know it, because a full accounting of this failed experiment has not been made,” Ludwig wrote. He called for a rigorous examination of “the low-fat diet debacle” and for more government funding to test new ideas in nutrition.

Read the CNN.com article: Doctor: Low-fat diets stuffed with misconceptions.

As I have said previously, living a healthy life and eating intelligently is the answer, not fad diets that don’t work and often throw your body out of balance.

Tony

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Filed under fat, healthy fats, low fat diet, saturated fat

Tagged as coconut oil, fats, low fat diet, saturated fat

January 31, 2014 · 11:29 am

You Are What You Eat: Low-fat Diet Changes Prostate Cancer Tissue

“These studies are showing that in men with prostate cancer, you really are what you eat,” Aronson said. “The studies suggest that by altering the diet, we may favorably affect the biology of prostate cancer.”

Cooking with Kathy Man

Men with prostate cancer who ate a low-fat diet and took fish oil supplements had lower levels of pro-inflammatory substances in their blood and a lower cell cycle progression score — a measure used to predict cancer recurrence — than men who ate a typical Western diet, UCLA researchers found.

The findings are important because lowering the cell cycle progression (CCP) score may help prevent prostate cancers from becoming more aggressive, said lead study author William Aronson, a clinical professor of urology at UCLA and chief of urologic oncology at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

“We found that CCP scores were significantly lower in the prostate cancer of men who consumed the low-fat fish oil diet, as compared to men who followed a higher-fat Western diet,” Aronson said. “We also found that men on the low-fat fish oil diet had reduced blood levels of pro-inflammatory substances that…

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