How reliable is this? Even if I do want to believe... <snip>
The swiftness in which all of the "healthy eating" and "low-fat" diet interests rushed to issue press releases to spin the results of the WHI study was reminiscent of the same desperate reactions after the CDC Flegal et.al. study debunked the government's "obesity" death statistics. But none of the spins or claims held up to the data, and the results of this huge study, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money spent on it, were quietly buried. (This author sent out countless queries last year trying to find a publication, including a national size acceptance publication, that would print this and it was rejected. "We can't tell people that!") To admit, "We were wrong, never mind!" would crumble the entire house of cards. And the myth of "healthy" eating goes on as if nothing ever happened. Beliefs that people need to be told to eat healthy and can't be trusted to eat right are equally entrenched, despite no scientific evidence in support for such dietary messages. In fact, the findings of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in 1996 and 2003 were that dietary counseling for healthy eating of adults or children lacked evidence. The take-home message is that the soundest science for decades supports eating normally, enjoying everything, and not worrying so much. When we enjoy a variety of foods from all of the food groups — as most everyone naturally does when they're not trying to control their eating — and trust our bodies, we'll get the nutrients we need to prevent deficiencies. And that is the only thing that nutritional science can credibly support. The rest is dietary religion. Health is not evidence of moral character and pristine diets. Don't let anyone try to scare you, threaten you, or get you to believe that if you don't eat "right" (whatever their definition) you'll get fat, cancer, heart disease, or die sooner. There is simply no good evidence. http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/10/junkfood-science-exclusive-big-one.html
