faulker053

It was like waking up in Sleeper, the Woody Allen movie, when the main character, asleep for umpteen years, wakes to find that cigarette smoking is good for your health. That’s how I felt some weeks ago after reading the half page article in the NY Times entitled “Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link”, based on the r ecent study by Dr. Chowdhury et al which reviewed more than 70 scientific studies and appears to turn our cholesterol lowering guidelines on its head. No one is concluding you should be eating more of this. You, my readers, may have little concern about your heart disease risk. Yet I urge you to keep reading—because unless this news splash is explained, you’ll be left feeling like health professionals just can’t get it right. I mean, one day they say saturated fats are bad, and next day they tell you they don’t impact your risk. Carbs are good, and then they’re bad. Hormone replacement therapy is recommended, and then it’s dangerous. Confronted with so much conflic...

An RD’s lessons from the Harvard Study Thanks to Right Angle Tutors for use of this photo Harvard researchers just discovered the cure to the so-called obesity epidemic. Or so you may think from their press release June 22, 2011 and from the media blitz that followed Effect of Lifestyle On Weight Gain, published in the NEJM. Powerful statements linking specific foods and food categories with resulting weight change emerged. And any progress we had made as a society toward a balanced approach to eating, to a move away from rigid food rules, crazy diets, and food paranoia was destroyed. They concluded the following: There are ‘good’ foods and there are ‘bad’ foods  Focusing on specific foods to avoid versus counting total calories is the way to consume less  Changing carbohydrate type is the answer for weight control, by eating less sugars and other sweets Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and yogurt prevent long term weight gain Do the fruit and nuts get to count as a fru...