Diet Dilemma: Every day, the truth about diet seems ever more elusive

[Guest guest]

Diet Dilemma: Every day, the " truth " about diet seems ever more

elusive

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11678153/site/newsweek/page/4/

 

Every day, the " truth " about diet seems ever more elusive even

while scientists insist the picture is becoming clearer. A classic

case is margarine. Early on, it was touted to be better than butter,

which contains saturated fat. But that was before scientists

realized that margarine had an even more noxious ingredient: trans

fat.

Margarine became poison. Now the pendulum has shifted back a bit as

manufacturers removed the bad fat and put in nonhydrogenated

oils. " Those are better, " says Dr. Walter Willett, chair of

nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. " But it's still

better to use unrefined liquid vegetable oils, like olive oil. "

 

And as for butter, the fact that margarine was worse doesn't make

butter good. " It's not health food, " Willett says.

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More recently, chocolate appeared to be heading for that coveted

health-food status, and the public was more than ready to gobble it

up. It began when a 2001 study (funded by the American Cocoa

Research Institute) found that cocoa powder and dark chocolate

boosted good cholesterol by 4 percent.

 

What most people didn't realize is that there were only 23

participants in this study, hardly enough to produce any serious

conclusion.

 

Nonetheless, it made headlines and was followed by additional

chocolate studies that seemed to find even more benefits.

 

But most of that research focused on a group of compounds in

chocolate called flavanols—which unfortunately tend to get processed

out of the chocolate you buy at the grocery store. And chocolate

still has lots of fat, sugar and calories.

 

 

CJ Gunther

Double Vision: Groopman, a writer and a doctor, sees both sides

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Just last week a study from the Netherlands published in the

Archives of Internal Medicine found that participants who ate the

most food containing chocolate (candy bars, spreads, pudding) had

slightly lower blood pressure and were half as likely to have died

from heart disease at the end of the 15-year follow-up.

 

However, it's not clear that the results were strictly from

chocolate.

 

The biggest challenge in dietary research is that nobody eats only

one thing. In this case, the chocolate lovers also ate less meat and

more nuts.

 

" This study is another piece of the puzzle, " says Harold Schmitz,

chief science officer of Mars Inc., the candy manufacturer.

 

" As much as I'd love to say it puts the capstone on the research, it

doesn't. " And it could be years before there's a definitive answer.

 

Everyone's looking for an immediate solution, but science takes

time. It took Judah Folkman decades to confirm his pioneering theory

that cancerous tumors rely on a blood supply to grow. When The New

York Times heralded his research on the front page with a headline

that proclaimed HOPE IN THE LAB, TV, newspapers and magazines

(including NEWSWEEK) picked up the story. Desperate patients flooded

Folkman's lab with phone calls seeking help. But at the time, his

research was only in mice, not men—a detail that many readers

overlooked.

More than anybody, Folkman understands how difficult it is to

balance enthusiasm for scientific progress with the danger of hyping

new developments. " That's the fundamental problem, " he says. " We

scientists don't always know how to share our excitement with the

public without making our research sound overdone. "

 

It's even more complicated with a study like the WHI, which is paid

for by taxpayers and is of enormous interest to a wide range of

people. What may have seemed like flip-flopping is actually an

evolutionary process, says Stanford's Marcia Stefanick, chair of the

WHI steering committee. " As we acquire new scientific information,

we need to modify public-health recommendations. " If the diet

results were misinterpreted, there's probably blame all around.

Journalists wanted juicy headlines and the public wanted a quick fix

for fat.

 

Scientists were trying to report their findings in the most

digestible form while acknowledging that reality was more complex.

It would be nice to think that everybody is a little bit wiser. For

all their differences, scientists and journalists are on the same

path. They should keep asking questions, not be discouraged by dead

ends and be open-minded to surprising truths.

 

With Anne Underwood and Pat Wingert

 

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc