ABC 11 TV Headline Reads: Reducing Fat Doesn’t Reduce Cancer: A Commentary and Opposing View

Well, just when you thought you had heard it all.

Last evening I was sitting at my computer—minding my own business—when the nightly news came on. I caught a sound bite which said reducing fat doesn’t reduce cancer.

And for a moment I thought I would explode.

The first question I asked myself was: When were newspaper journalists first given a key to the meat industry’s bedroom?

To keep this post short—and my blood pressure down—I am only going to briefly address the two culprits in the publication of such outrageous misinformation given to the American public and other media outlets throughout the world.

1. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Need I say more. Medical doctors only have two weapons to treat disease: pills and surgery, and any thing that threatens the sell of these pills and surgery will be fought against with a skill and fervor as if their livelihood depended on it—and in their minds, it does.

However, the weapons that they now use to fight their enemy of good food and nutrition are much more sophisticated. These weapons now take the form of “scientific studies”, and since we are a rational bunch here in the States, we are expected to simply swallow these studies whole. No need to take a closer look. No need to read the fine print. No need to comment. (More on the specifics of the one major flaw in the study below.)

2. Newspaper journalists are supposed to present an unbiased view, but because they long ago decided that it would be too risky to offer alternative views on the issue of health and healing, it has become very difficult--if not damn near impossible--to find a story on health that is balanced.

When the alternative view is not offered, there can be no balance – scientific studies included. And it would seem that since they have taken the position of not offering views from alternative health care providers when it comes to publications from the JAMA, you would think they would go the extra mile and actually read the fine print of the studies, i.e. do a little journalistic investigation—I know, what a concept. But they don’t, they run with the story as it is, unaware or uncaring of its impact and import.

That thousands will die because of their lack of professionalism seems a small price to pay in beating out their competition with “breaking news.”

Yes, I’m upset—and I rarely get upset. So let me finish my point so I can move past this and get back to writing more articles to actually help people recall health to the body, mind and spirit, holistically.

First, let me point you to the actual article posted in the JAMA at:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/6/629#REF-JOC60003-1

Here’s the hypothesis:

“The hypothesis that a low-fat dietary pattern can reduce breast cancer risk has existed for decades but has never been tested in a controlled intervention trial.”

You’ll note in the “Interventions” section, it reads:

“Women were randomly assigned to the dietary modification intervention group (40% [n = 19 541]) or the comparison group (60% [n = 29 294]). The intervention was designed to promote dietary change with the goals of reducing intake of total fat to 20% of energy and increasing consumption of vegetables and fruit to at least 5 servings daily and grains to at least 6 servings."

You see the researchers begun with a thought/proposition that reducing fat consumption by 20% might have an effect on the reduction of cancer. And it is regrettable that the study was not controlled enough to include participants who actually met that criteria.

Here’s what the researchers found:

“Dietary fat intake was significantly lower in the dietary modification intervention group compared with the comparison group. The difference between groups in change from baseline for percentage of energy from fat varied from 10.7% at year 1 to 8.1% at year 6. Vegetable and fruit consumption was higher in the intervention group by at least 1 serving per day and a smaller, more transient difference was found for grain consumption. The number of women who developed invasive breast cancer (annualized incidence rate) over the 8.1-year average follow-up period was 655 (0.42%) in the intervention group and 1072 (0.45%) in the comparison group (hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.83-1.01 for the comparison between the 2 groups). Secondary analyses suggest a lower hazard ratio among adherent women, provide greater evidence of risk reduction among women having a high-fat diet at baseline, and suggest a dietary effect that varies by hormone receptor characteristics of the tumor.”

What one might conclude from the items highlighted above is that at no time in this controlled study did the intervention group reach a level of reducing their fat intake by 20%.

Moreover, they only increased their fruit and vegetable intake to one serving more than the uncontrolled group, and did not consume the five servings which would have placed them within the criteria for being a part of the control group.

And instead of the researchers reporting that the study was therefore invalid because the control group was not really under control, they merely reported that there was no significant reduction in cancer among the control group. In my mind, that is not the same thing, nor is it the truth.

Instead of strapping their results and starting off with a group who might actually and easily meet the criteria that was established for the control group (ie. a group which has already decreased their fat consumption by 20% as a matter of lifestyle, such as vegetarians), and comparing those persons with the general population, the “scientists” might have been able to achieve and report legitimate results.

I am no scholar, but let’s call a spade a spade. Give me a controlled study and give me scientific results, or report to me that the study was inconclusive due to the lack of a control group, and I am satisfied.

I’m only guessing, but probably after you have spent mucho dinero ($$) to conduct an 8 year study, the higher ups want to know the outcome. When the researchers had to cough up something, all they managed to do was to cough up phlegm. And that the JAMA then regurgitated that phlegm out to the American public is unacceptable.

That the media then continued to spew out these results through its outlets is perhaps the thing that concerns me the most. Because I certainly can understand why the AMA did what it did, I do not know why the newspaper industry did not feel impelled to challenge the findings, i.e. to do their jobs!

Where is my valerian supplement? These folks have gotten on my last nerve.

Well, this is Lo and I gotta go … ‘cause I’m running for my life.