JAMA Studies Missing the Mark
A Renowned Nutrition Expert Sets the Record Straight
"These studies were designed to show NOTHING. And they did a great job. The results are worthless-they studied diet changes that were too little and too late." Joel Fuhrman, MD.
According to Dr. Fuhrman, the recent studies published this week in JAMA are nothing new. Researchers are still in the dark. "Low Fat" is not, and never has been, the key factor in disease causation. (Researchers that conducted those studies should already be aware of the hundreds of other studies that demonstrate the very same thing!)
Unfortunately, studies are still focused on low-fat diets, instead of childhood diets, which is where most heart disease and cancers originate.
Dr. Fuhrman's recent book, Disease-Proof Your Child, reviewed these studies that show late life dietary changes to lower fat intake have literally no effect on incidence of cancer or heart disease.
It is the concentration of nutrients (what Dr. Fuhrman refers to as the "nutrient-per-calorie ratio") that should be the focus, NOT the amount of fat consumed.
Valuable vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds constitute a shameful 5% of total calories consumed by American children-THIS IS THE ROOT OF OUR CANCER EPIDEMIC.
Did anybody else notice that 85% of the calories consumed in the study were from processed foods and animal products? (There are no cancer-fighting phytochemicals and antioxidants in egg whites, chicken, and pasta-as "low-fat" as they may be.)
One might say that studying the cancer risk of a moderate diet change in post-menopausal women is about as effective as studying whether or not cutting cigarette smoking from a 2 pack-per-day habit down to 1 pack-per-day has any effect on lung cancer in 65 yr-olds. It's insanity. This doesn't mean to throw out your healthy eating plan. A little nutritional intelligence is all that's needed here.
He adds, "Even though the factors initiating cancer causation cannot be eliminated with late-life dietary changes, nutritional excellence later in life can have dramatic effects at lowering cholesterol and preventing heart disease.
However, a much more aggressive change in diet is required to achieve that degree of protection than what was looked at in these recent studies. It has already been established that a diet-style which contains a much larger percent of calories from unrefined plant foods (ninety percent) has dramatic effects on the occurrence of heart disease."
Too many people cut out fats without realizing the focus should be quality, not quantity. If you skip foods like nuts, seeds, avocados, and other unprocessed "high-fat" foods, for the sake of lowering fat intake, you are robbing your body of some of the very components (phytochemicals and antioxidants) it needs to prevent disease in the first place. That being said, it could be reasonably concluded that: Cutting these healthy fats out of your diet could be contributing to the problem!
Dr. Fuhrman has read and reviewed over 60,000 medical journal studies over the last 20 years, has over 15 years of clinical success in his own practice, and authored the best-selling EAT TO LIVE in an effort to outline his plan in usable form for anyone interested in preventing and reversing disease with nutritional excellence.
Dr. Fuhrman's vegetable-based diet was studied in the medical journal Metabolism, 2001 and was found to lower LDL cholesterol 33 percent and have dramatic effects on cardiac disease markers. Similar plant-based dietary approaches either vegetarian or near-vegetarian containing mostly vegetables, bean, fruits, and nuts have also been shown to offer dramatic protection against heart disease, even when adopted later in life. (See references below.)
Joel Fuhrman, MD, board-certified family physician, best-selling author, lecturer, and expert on all subjects of nutrition, is available TODAY to explain why the JAMA study is NOT a good reason to stop eating nutrient-rich foods, and would welcome the opportunity to debate (w/any "trusted source") the popular myth that is keeping our country stuck in a vicious cycle of disease.
I hope you find this critical information valuable to your audience.
Contact:
Audra Parsons Publicist
(p) (908) 237-2195 ext.228
(c) (908) 310-8225
audra@drfuhrman.com <mailto:audra@drfuhrman.com>
www.DrFuhrman.com <http://www.DrFuhrman.com>
www.DiseaseProof.com <http://www.DiseaseProof.com>
You've seen Dr. Fuhrman on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Good Morning America, Today, America's Talking, Martha Stewart Living, the TV Food Network, CNN, and the Discovery Channel, among others.
Relevent Studies:
Jenkins DJ, Kendall CW, Popovich DG, et al. Effect of a very-high-fiber vegetable, fruit, and nut diet on serum lipids and colonic function.
Metabolism
2001 Apr;50(4):494-503.
Hu FB, Willett WC. Optimal diets for prevention of coronary heart disease.
JAMA
2002 Nov 27;288(20):2569-2578.
Campbell TC, Parpia B, Chen J. Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China study. Am J Cardiol 1998 Nov 26;82(10B):18T-21T
Esselstyn CB. Resolving the Coronary Artery Disease Epidemic Through Plant-Based Nutrition. 2001 Autumn;4(4):171-177
THE STUDY:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/6/629
THE NY TIMES ARTICLE:
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/08/health/08fat.html?hp&ex=1139461200&en=94a8756355f69047&ei=5094&partner=homepage http://nytimes.com/2006/02/08/health/08fat.html?hp&ex=1139461200&en=94a8756355f69047&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Don't let our nation's nutritional ignorance turn into nutritional stupidity!