Recently, a clinical study of 5,000 women seemed to indicate that low-fat diets do not reduce the risk of heart disease or cancer. However, experts say that the study is misleading.
Very few women who participated in the study actually managed to reduce their fat intake down to 20 percent or below; in other words, the study was largely an analysis of those who did not manage to stick to a diet.
The study also made no distinctions between saturated and polyunsaturated fat, but instead looked at overall fat.
Excess weight, which is of course connected to dietary intake, is verifiably linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Many of the research trials you hear about in the media have serious conflicts of interest and bias, and their results simply cannot be trusted. If you haven't yet read Why Americans Will Believe Most Anything, I believe you will have a better appreciation of this concept after you finish the article.
If you want to better understand why I don't advocate one-size-fits-all diets like the South Beach Plan, you'll want to read this awesome article in USA Today about the confusing results of a study on low-fat diets.
The study mainly showed that people have difficulty sticking to generic diet plans assigned blindly, as if all people were exactly the same. That was the first and obvious problem with the study and the reason noted in the USA Today article.
The more important and serious problem with this and nearly every other similar dietary study is that they fail to account for the fact that people have unique individual biochemistries and require different optimum diets.
There simply is not a perfect diet for everyone, which nearly all of these studies have as one of their underlying assumptions.
A diet calibrated to fit the particular needs of your own body is actually easy to stick to -- it consists, after all, of the foods your body naturally wants and needs.
One of the best things you can do for your health is to forget the designer diets and foods and retool your daily diet based on the foods your body was built to eat for its unique nutritional type. If you're looking to make an impact on your health, you may also want to consider my professional online nutritional type test.