Spreading the word on low-fat's failure

There's manna for the media today. News this morning about the failure of low-fat diets to improve health over a 10-year study of postmenopausal women is like a good hurricane: something everybody can understand and have feelings about. So many of us, my house included, have been working hard to get used to the taste of less fat in our food. After the food companies reeled us in with LOW FAT on the labels, they grabbed us all again in the last two years with LOW CARB. By now, 2 percent milk seems like a splurge in my fridge.

That's going to come undone in some households this week. Spend a few minutes with Google News by typing in Dr. Jules Hirsch, author of the National Institute for Health study — then look at all the spins the media is putting on 10 years of research. The comments range from, "This was bogus advice to begin with" to "Well, yes, the study showed no measureable benefit from eating less fat. But you shouldn't go nuts now."

Trouble is, a 10-year study is massive in medical research. Hardly any run that long. Some media outlets have found doctors who say, "well, they should have run the study longer to get results." Theories die hard.

I'd bet the freezers will be bare of Haagen Daz by the end of the week. Out on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, the readers are already weighing in, so to speak, on being released from their fatless prisons. A typical letter, from Violet Lawton of Alameda:

I have been on a low-fat diet for about 30 years. Four years ago I had a heart attack. A year later, I had lung cancer and a pneumonectomy, so I believe the results of the National Institutes of Health study from bitter experience. It makes me mad that I could have had hot fudge sundaes all these years.

What's clear is that there's no silver bullet to health, despite what the food companies would promote on their packages. You gotta move, you gotta eat smart. A San Jose Mercury News story includes a quote from a Stanford researcher who says, "What we need to be thinking about is a healthy low-fat diet. We really need to hone in on getting nutritious foods into our diets.''

Of course, the coverage was so hurried at the Merc that the quote has a typo: "we really need to home in on..." And perhaps we do need to focus on the home, for those of us who are trying to eat more controlled meals.

Expect lots of coverage of the 49,000-woman study, poured like caramel over Natural Vanilla Bean Blue Bell. If there's some extra intelligence that surfaces, like adding exercise — well, maybe that's the jimmies over the top of this confection of liberation.