Women who cut dietary fat lose weight: study

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Post-menopausal women who cut their fat intake and eat more high-fiber, high-carbohydrate foods such as fruits and whole grains tend to lose weight, not gain it as some diet books claim, a study said on Tuesday.

Some popular diet plans have blamed high-carbohydrate diets for expanding waistlines and the explosion of obesity rates.

The seven-year study involved 19,000 women who followed a low-fat diet without any weight-loss goals. In the first year, they shed an average of 4.8 pounds (2.2 kg) and maintained a modest weight loss in succeeding years.

"A low-fat dietary pattern may help attenuate the tendency for weight gain commonly observed in post-menopausal women," said the study published in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The results "demonstrate that long-term recommendations to achieve a diet lower in total and saturated fat with increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and without focus on weight loss, do not cause weight gain," wrote lead author Barbara Howard of the MedStar Research Institute in Washington.

Recommendations to cut dietary fat are usually aimed at reducing the risks of heart disease and cancer associated with being overweight, the report said.

Source: REUTERS