By Kennedy Shelley
The authors of the most expensive health study ever done in the US still has not been able to produce any substantial health recommendations or diet changes that stand up to long term scrutiny.
The Women’s Health Initiative is an ambitious program designed to see if reducing fat from the diet would lead to longer healthier lives.
Over 49,000 women enrolled in the study.
The idea was to keep half of the group on their standard American diet, and half were encouraged to eat more fruit, vegetables, and grain while cutting down on fat.
Though the study was started in 1993, they did not really give advice as to whether the women should cut back on meat or plant-based fats.
The results were disappointing to the study authors.
They hoped to prove that the government’s food pyramid would prove to be the healthier way of eating.
The results were quite the opposite.
There was no drop-in cancer in the group who ate less fat. They also gained more weight than those on the standard diet (defined as people who got more than 38% of their calories from fat).
The study only included post-menopausal women.
After eight years, the results showed that a major reduction in fat calories did nothing to improve the health of these women.
This week the WHI released a follow up study where they interviewed the women who took part in the study and tried to make the case that some of the women who lowered their fat intake survived breast cancer more than those on a standard diet, but nothing else seemed to be a positive benefit.
This study actually shows what other studies have shown…using the government guidelines actually increases your chances of early death.
The best study was done from 1968-1973 called the Minnesota Coronary Experiment.
It was a brilliant double-blind study where people who were in institutions were either fed a “healthy” government diet with skim milk, corn oil, and margarine, or one with whole milk, butter, and regular oil.
The results showed that while cholesterol did drop in the low-fat group, they tended to die much earlier.
Despite the fact that this was a government funded study, they did not release the results because they were disappointed that the results didn’t match their expectation.
The whole debacle wasn’t released until 2016 when an enterprising researcher found all the original research material and looked at it again.
All this begs the question: “When is the government going to drop the idea that a low-fat diet is good for us?”
You may be on a keto diet and really don’t care about the government’s recommendations, but it does impact a significant part of the US population.
All kids taking part in the school lunch program, or people in the military, or in government institutions are subject to the guidelines.
And the government propaganda does seem to have an impact on eating patterns in the US.
When the food pyramid came out, egg and meat consumption decreased dramatically. McDonald’s even changed the fat in made its fries in.
The result was an epidemic of obesity and diabetes that is costing billions of dollars a year to treat.
But still the low-fat believers keep pushing this agenda and their latest rehash of the Women’s Health Initiative shows again just how wedded they are to this idea.
