This is a BIG deal . . . Low-Fat Diet Does Not Cut Health Risks, Study Finds . . . this is a massive study over eight years of nearly 49,000 women costing over US$415 million. It’s the “Rolls Royce” of studies and the results were completely unexpected . . . the low-fat diet pretty much resulted in the same cancer and heart disease levels as the regular non low-fat diet. Those who ate pretty much what they wanted to were just as obese or slim as the low-fat dieters (the low-fat eaters were not trying to lose weight, it was to see if there were preventative differences against heart disease and cancer which is the conventional wisdom). Conventional wisdom seems to be wrong. Diet alone is not a factor in protecting against these diseases. The only exception was in levels of certain types of cholesterol which do lead to heart disease. Low-fat dieters did have slightly lower levels of LDL cholesterol but not enough to make a difference in heart disease risks for the women in general when compared to the levels in the other dieters. The findings affect some of our assumptions about obesity and diabetes as well as cancer and heart disease. Of course, diet alone is not enough to prevent any disease and healthy eating along with appropriate exercise will go a long ways. There are some folks who are skeptical of the conclusions but the results are pretty much likely to be the last word on the subject as the study was well designed, heavily vetted, and massive in scope.