The diet-heart hypothesis: a critique.

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The diet-heart hypothesis: a critique.

Weinberg SL.

Medical Education, Dayton Heart Hospital, Dayton, Ohio 45429, USA.

slwjal@...

J Am Coll Cardiol. 2004 Mar 3;43(5):731-3.

The low-fat " diet-heart hypothesis " has been controversial for nearly

100 years. The low-fat-high-carbohydrate diet, promulgated vigorously

by the National Cholesterol Education Program, National Institutes of

Health, and American Heart Association since the Lipid Research

Clinics-Primary Prevention Program in 1984, and earlier by the U.S.

Department of Agriculture food pyramid, may well have played an

unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid

abnormalities, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet

can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious

medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and a

growing medical literature suggesting that the much-maligned low-

carbohydrate-high-protein diet may have a salutary effect on the

epidemics in question.