The 29th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium has been going on this past week. Several news items have come out of the conference. The latest carried this headline in the Washington Post: “A Low-Fat Diet May Protect Against Breast Cancer After All.”
The headline doesn’t exactly match the story, which describes how the research was on effect of a low-fat diet on women who are recovering from breast cancer. It is not, as the headline suggests, about breast cancer prevention. In this study, the women who were actively encouraged to adopt a low-fat diet had a lower risk of breast cancer returning.
In a comment on this study, other researchers found several flaws. Among these was their concern that the study could not distinguish between the effect of reduced fat consumption and the effect of reduced calorie intake and weight loss. In other words, were the women on the low-fat diet at lesser risk because they ate less fat or because they ate less period?
I have yet to look at what the women actually ate, but three problems immediately come to mind. And this goes for both groups of women: those on a low-fat diet (the so-called intervention group) and those who were not (the so-called controls). The first concern I have is the quality of the fats these women ate. The second is what else these women ate. In particular, how did they compensate for lowered calories from fat with carbohydrates and protein? And of what kind and quality? The third thing I wonder is what would happen if the experiment had included a group of women whose fat intake increased.
More broadly, this is one of many studies that attempt to show a benefit to breast cancer patients who eat low-fat. The researchers want to present this study as somehow definitive, but it’s clear that it is not. They want to do this because some studies have shown an effect, while some have not. Of those showing an effect, each shows effects on different types of breast cancer. In other words, there’s no clear pattern to the study results. What this says to me is that they don’t know how to ask the question about the relationship between breast cancer risk and diet.
Perhaps what we’re seeing in this collection of conflicting studies is the individualized effect of nutrients on breast cancer risk. In other words, the question is not about low-fat or any other dietary silver bullet. The question is about the diet that best supports a woman’s health, a matter that is unique to each woman.
Yet this study had its desired result, which was to deliver the message that a low-fat diet reduces cancer risk, however inaccurate and unfounded that message happens to be. I’ve written several pieces for our blog recently on this issue of messages from conventional science delivered through the mainstream media. The messages are anywhere from inaccurate to wrong.
How is it that these studies make headlines while the work of researchers like the Dr. Burzynski receives so little attention (except, of course, on outlets like this program)?
The answer is that there is a system in place that keeps mainstream ideas in public view. I’ll let you in on a little secret. For the most part, science journalists are informed of breaking research news by mainstream institutions and journals. It’s close to a flood. There’s a website called Eureka Alert that’s run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It carries press releases from research institutions and journals about studies that are about to be published.
So you have the American Association for the Advancement of Science as the gatekeeper to who is and is not list through Eureka Alert. You have public relations departments at the selected institutions and journals deciding what is and is not newsworthy. And finally, journalists pick from among these studies for stories that will make good headlines, headlines that deliver a message.
Those messages work. I’ve seen it in my practice. So my advice to you is if you notice health-related news items at all, understand that what you’re reading is likely half-baked science.
