On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:17:18 GMT, Default User
> wrote:


>Studies in the past seemed to show high fat diets to be deterimental to
>health. Newer studies seem to show high carbs may be. Does that mean the
>old studies were wrong? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps these are wrong.
>Perhaps these are right. Latching on to any study and saying, "OK, we
>have the truth now!" is probably misguided at best.

The problem with any epidemiological study is that you are looking for
correlations, not causes. Sometimes you can wind up with the wrong
conclusions if you do your groupings wrong.

For example, you might see that people who ate meat and potatoes, meat
and pasta, meat and rice tended weight problems, while those who ate
lots of vegetables and beans didn't. You might conclude that meat in
the diet was the problem, whereas it might be the starches or the lack
of vegetables.

>
>Studies do seem to show that being overweight is a major contributor to
>heart disease, no matter how you got there.

The proper word should be correlation. Epidemiological studies can only
show correlations.


>You lose weight by reducing caloric intake. What means you use is highly
>individual. As I said in a previous message, the sorry fact is that most
>people who lose weight by whatever means gain it back, most within a
>relatively short period of time. It ain't easy.

Yes, the 'trick' is finding a diet that you can continue to follow in
'maintenance' mode.