UPDATES:LOW FAT CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Very low fat diets can be harmful to some people, confirms the American Heart Association.

According to a recent report, those people who are at highest risk of heart disease show the greatest benefit from low fat diets, but, surprisingly, the remainder (approximately two thirds) of the population would not benefit and, for a number of these people, low fat regimes would even be harmful.

Dr Ronald Krauss, chairman of the association’s nutrition committee and head of molecular medicine at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, says that studies in healthy people show that there are genetic differences in the response to a low fat diet (BMJ, 1998; 316: 573).