By Sandy Szwarc 06/02/2005

Just as the recent Flegal study by the Centers for Disease Control put the nail into the coffin of the obesity crisis myth, one published this week in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association buries the dieting myth. While it's popularly believed that dieting and weight loss improve health, this study found the greatest improvements are among women who don't diet.

"You can make significant improvements in both metabolic and psychological health without ever stepping on the scales or counting calories," said lead researcher Linda Bacon of the University of California, Davis. "You can relax about food and eat what you want."

This was a randomized clinical trial, universally recognized by the scientific community as the strongest type of experiment to test the efficacy of medical treatments and the least susceptible to bias. This study clinically followed the segment of the population which diets the most, and is most targeted by the weight loss industry: fat women ages 30 to 45. For six months, half of the women participated in a traditional diet and weight loss program, complete with social support; standard nutritional guidance to moderately restrict calories, on how to count calories and fat, read food labels and shop, maintain food diaries, and monitor their weight; and were given information of the benefits of exercise and behavioral strategies for successful dieting. The other women were instructed to let go of restrictive eating habits and not weigh themselves, were counseled to eat according to their natural appetites, given standard nutritional information about healthful foods, and participated in a support group designed to help them become more accepting of their larger bodies, develop a positive self image, and enjoy their bodies. The second approach is the medical paradigm known as "health at every size." After six months of weekly group interventions among both groups, they were followed monthly thereafter.

The just-released findings show that while the dieting group that had initially lost weight, it had regained almost all of it two years later, while the nondieters' weights had remained stable. Both groups had initially lowered their systolic blood pressure but it had rebounded among the dieters, while the nondieters had sustained their improvements. The dieters showed no change in their total cholesterol or LDL cholesterol, while the nondieters had significantly decreased theirs by the end of the study.

It has been well documented that dieting virtually always fails long-term -- about 90 to 95% of the time -- and that dieting drop-out rates are high. But this study also poignantly illustrated that improvements to health and health behaviors with dieting are not maintained and in the end dieting actually worsens women's health and quality of life. The dieting group which had significantly increased their physical activity right after the treatment period, had returned to their initial levels by the end of the study. And most remarkably, there was nearly 200% more bulimia and eating disorders among the dieters compared to the nondieters. The dieters' self esteem and depression had also significantly worsened, which isn't surprising given most dieters are left with an overwhelming sense of failure. And the psychological and physiological effects, as well as eating problems, resulting from calorie restriction itself have been clinically documented.  

The nondieters, on the other hand, enjoyed extraordinary improvements in their self esteem and feeling good about their bodies, and less depression. Nondieting resulted in healthier eating and more normal relationships with food, less eating restraint and feelings of hunger. And the nondieters, by learning the joys of movement separate from an "exercise" or weight loss regimen, had nearly quadrupled their physical activity. They'd naturally made healthier habits part of their lifestyles by simply nurturing and appreciating the bodies they had.

Dieting advocates continue to voice objections in mainstream media about the nondieting approach. In the March issue of Diabetes Health experts debated whether weight loss was the appropriate prescription for better health. Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, claimed "People who say that you just need to eat right and exercise have no data that that works better than telling people to go and diet." But after this recent body of evidence, now we know the real story.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/060205D.html

Don't believe what you read

Supplement
William Skidelsky
Monday 18th July 2005

Food for thought: panic attacks. By William Skidelsky

Unless you drink two litres of water a day, your body won't be properly hydrated. People in the west consume far too much salt, increasing their risk of high blood pressure. Non-organic foods are covered in harmful pesticides. The incidence of obesity would be drastically reduced if only we stopped gorging on Big Macs.

Many people would regard all of the above claims as true. After all, they are repeated incessantly in the media, by health officials and in general conversation. They have become nuggets of wisdom that shape our understanding of the relationship between what we eat and the healthiness of our bodies. So they must be true, mustn't they?

Well, not according to the authors of a bold new book: Panic Nation: unpicking the myths we're told about food and health (John Blake). Edited by two biochemists, Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, it sets out to demonstrate that, when it comes to food, we are collectively the victims of an incredible amount of hogwash.

The basic problem, according to the authors, is that our society is in thrall to the "precautionary principle". Ours is a worse-case-scenario mentality whereby any small or medium-sized risk is converted into a portent of near-certain catastrophe. Relatively trivial dangers - such as the recent Sudan 1 scandal - are magnified out of all proportion. Food is a natural focus for scaremongering, since it is common to everyone. According to Feldman and Marks, this is why so many of us believe that the food we eat is killing us, even though life-expectancy is longer than at any time in human history.

It is hard not to concede that they have a point. The tone of the book may be trenchant, but the arguments are sensible and even-handed. The authors do not deny that the food we eat affects us, or that it is important to eat healthily. What they do say is that our ability to look rationally at the issues is hampered by the prevalence of all sorts of myths. The chapter on junk food is particularly thought-provoking. The term "junk food", it is suggested, is an oxymoron, since if a substance has nutritional value, then by definition it cannot be junk. Fat is fat, whether it comes from processed ground beef or from an Aberdeen Angus steak. Big Macs may not be good for you, but they are not outrageously unhealthy either: in fact, they contain roughly the same calories as a Safeway tomato, chicken and basil salad.

Fine, but does this matter? Is it really a problem if we exaggerate the danger of Big Macs? Well, Feldman and Marks would retort, it does matter, because it changes the way we view an issue such as obesity. At present, the responsibility for obesity is placed squarely at the door of a group of foods that we arbitrarily choose to label "junk". If these foods were banned, or at the very least taxed, then obesity would disappear. In fact, the issue is more complex. A number of factors cause obesity, among them exercise levels, metabolism and diet. Whether or not a person habitually visits McDonald's may not be all that important.

The book makes other provocative claims. Pesticides are not present in large enough quantities to be remotely dangerous. The virtues of organic food are largely mythical, as are the hazards of GM. And as for fluid intake, it seems that you can safely put that bottle of mineral water away. Of the two litres the average person requires daily, half is provided as an inevitable consequence of the food they eat, and the rest by two cups of coffee and a glass of beer.

New Statesman