You can’t trust ’em. Ask Jeff Jacoby:
“Study finds no major benefits of low-fat diet.” The study, a project of the National Institutes of Health, had taken eight years, cost $415 million, and involved nearly 49,000 older women, 40 percent of whom were assigned to a diet that kept their intake of calories from fat significantly below that of the other 60 percent. Researchers had expected to confirm what earlier studies and conventional medical wisdom had long suggested — that consuming less fat is good for your health.
What they learned instead was that the women who dutifully cut back on fried foods, ice cream, and pizza ended up no better off than the women who ate whatever they wanted. The two groups developed breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks, and strokes at the same rates. Millions of Americans have been trying for years to reduce the fat in their diet — eating bread without butter, salads without dressing, chicken without skin — and now the largest study of the subject ever conducted says it has all been for naught. You could have had those fries after all.
