[Mb-civic] MUST READ: You bet I want fries with that - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  You bet I want fries with that

By Jeff Jacoby  |  February 12, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

I DON'T usually follow nutrition stories, but it was hard to miss last 
week's shocker about low-fat diets. The Globe put it on Page 1, high 
above the fold: ''Study finds no major benefits of low-fat diet." The 
study, a project of the National Institutes of Health, had taken eight 
years, cost $415 million, and involved nearly 49,000 older women, 40 
percent of whom were assigned to a diet that kept their intake of 
calories from fat significantly below that of the other 60 percent. 
Researchers had expected to confirm what earlier studies and 
conventional medical wisdom had long suggested -- that consuming less 
fat is good for your health.

What they learned instead was that the women who dutifully cut back on 
fried foods, ice cream, and pizza ended up no better off than the women 
who ate whatever they wanted. Both groups developed breast cancer, colon 
cancer, heart attacks, and strokes at the same rates. Millions of 
Americans have tried for years to reduce the fat in their diet -- eating 
bread without butter, salads without dressing, chicken without skin -- 
and now the largest study of the subject ever conducted says it has all 
been for naught. You could have had those fries after all.

And so once again we are reminded, as The New York Times sighed in an 
editorial on Thursday, that ''the more we learn about nutrition, the 
less we seem to know." Does oat bran reduce cholesterol? Can dietary 
fiber prevent colon cancer? Are high doses of Vitamin E good for your 
heart? Once, the experts said yes. Then the experts said no. It 
sometimes seems that for every study that makes a nutritional claim, 
another study inevitably makes an equal and opposite claim.

Researchers can't even agree on whether eating less fat is the way to 
lose weight. Some insist that obesity is caused by ingesting too much 
fat. Others claim that it's carbohydrates, not fat, that make people 
gain weight. Which theory did the massive new study confirm? Neither. 
Apparently there is still no clear-cut answer -- not even for $415 million.

But clear-cut answers are just what so many Americans want, and what so 
many of them think science ought to be able to provide. There is a 
seemingly inexhaustible willingness to believe that the voice of science 
is the voice of truth -- impartial, incorruptible, and unambiguous. It 
isn't, of course. Scientists are no less vulnerable to error or bias or 
ego than the rest of the human race. Scientists too can blunder or act 
from ulterior motives or convince themselves of things that aren't so. 
And yet on the whole they enjoy a level of deference and public trust 
that people in most other fields can only envy.

Which is probably not a good thing. Scientific pronouncements should be 
subjected to the same level of healthy skepticism as the promises of 
politicians or the claims of advertisers -- or the views of newspaper 
columnists. With the best of intentions (and otherwise), scientists 
sometimes peddle claptrap. Just because a statement begins with ''A new 
study shows . . ." or ''Researchers have found . . ." doesn't mean that 
what follows is true. ''We in the scientific community often give strong 
advice based on flimsy evidence," Berkeley statistician David Freedman 
said last week in a comment on the low-fat diet study. ''That's why we 
have to do experiments." And why the rest of us have to remember that 
contradiction, confusion, and changing opinions have always been a part 
of the scientific process.

One day after last week's low-fat story, the New England Journal of 
Medicine was out with a study concluding that saw palmetto extract, an 
herbal product, has no effect on the symptoms caused by an enlarged 
prostate. Earlier studies had found just the opposite, and more than 2 
million American men take saw palmetto for their prostate condition. So 
does it work or doesn't it? Whichever answer you choose, there's a study 
to back it up.

In Newsweek last month, Dr. Harvey Simon of the Harvard Medical School 
recanted a view he had preached for years: that the only way to benefit 
from exercise was through intense aerobic activity, complete with 
pounding heart and rivers of sweat. Now, citing the latest research, he 
says he was dead wrong, and that gentle, no-sweat exercise -- even 
walking or gardening -- is also highly effective.

 From cardiac health to climate change, it's worth keeping in mind that 
what the experts say today they may not be saying tomorrow. As that 
noted scientist Emily Litella used to put it in the old ''Saturday Night 
Live" skits: Never mind.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/12/you_bet_i_want_fries_with_that/
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