What is really a good diet?

I just stumbled upon a Newsday article that looks at a few pieces of research to try to find out what a good diet is. Is a good diet high or low in fat? There is so much conflicting evidence these days but I think this kind of article helps you ask yourself a lot of questions and then it is up to you to decide what to do about it by listening to how your body reacts to different diets.

When it comes to defining a healthy diet, it’s easy to become confused. Recent reports from the Women’s Health Initiative study, which followed 40,000 women for eight years, concluded that low-fat diets and calcium with vitamin D supplements do not decrease a woman’s risk for heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer or hip fractures. Upon hearing this news, after being schooled for years on the merits of low-fat diets and calcium, a health-conscious person might be tempted to eat any old thing.

But hold on. While these types of large-scale trials help researchers and policy planners, they do not by themselves help consumers craft a healthy diet. That is because standards for conducting such studies and analyzing data have built-in limitations.

The dietary pattern studied in the Women’s Health Initiative – low fat with five servings of fruits and vegetables and six servings of grains – was based on research available when the study began in the early 1990s. This diet stressed proportions of fats and carbohydrates. But more recent research takes into account the quality of fats and carbohydrates, not just quantity.
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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.