Good news for Mrs. Jack Spratt

From the NYT:

Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won't Stop Cancer or Heart Disease

As we always suspected.

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

"These studies are revolutionary," said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. "They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."

Amen to that.

This is a big deal. A study of 49,000 has weight. It might not be the absolute last word but it should be decisive enough to put to rest a half-century of half-baked nutritional myth.

Sadly it is beginning to look like there is only one sure way for most of us to lose weight and be healthier: Eat less, exercise more. We're trying.

And yes, the stomach staple is still out there, but unless you have no other choice, it's not exactly the natural thing to do, is it?