For years we've heard that to protect yourself from heart disease you should follow a "low fat" diet. Even many hospitals and health professionals still stick to this rule of low fat diets at the risk of omitting heart healthy foods. New research from the Women's Health Initiative dietary modification trial published in the February 8th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported their findings of an 8-year follow up study. One of the reports showed that postmenopausal women who followed a low fat (20% of calories from fat) diet did not have a lower risk of heart disease. This makes things confusing since we have been taught for years that low fat equals better heart health. The two go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly. Before we all ditch the low fat model and rush to eat our favorite high fat fare there are a few more pieces to this puzzle to know.

This study did have some limitations. First of all, they were depending on self-reporting from the participants for an 8 year process. This of course leads room for discrepancies since we all eat on auto pilot most of the time. It would be hard to say you followed a strict low fat diet for 8 years without writing down what you ate every day. Also they didn't take into account other lifestyle factors such as exercise or stress management. All can contribute to the risk level of heart disease. Not only that, some of the authors disclosed they had their hands in the pharmaceutical cookie jar