Junkfoodscience.com has taken the American Heart Association to task for the poor quality of its evidentiary review to support its lifestyle recommendations for women. Writing of the American Heart Association's Evidence-based Guidelines for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Women released in May, Sandy Szwarc:
Not one observational study was able to credibly support the AHA heart healthy eating recommendations for women to prevent heart disease or premature death. The only observational study specifically looking at Healthy Eating in accordance with our government's dietary guidelines found no benefit. And finally, the strongest evidence - an actual clinical trial of the heart healthy diet on the primary prevention of heart disease in women, that went on for more than 8 years - found it had no effect on heart disease. Reviews of clinical trials conducted on heart healthy programs to date have found them of doubtful effectiveness, with no effect on mortality. Our beliefs in healthy eating have gone far beyond well-founded advice to eat normally and enjoy a variety of foods in order to prevent deficiencies, fuel our bodies, and for pleasure; to beliefs in special powers of foods as medicines or poisons.
This review looked at the evidence being used to support "evidence-based" recommendations for a heart healthy diet. When we hear the term "evidence-based," most of us probably had a very different picture in our minds.
While the AHA calls for rigorous public policies to implement its preventive guidelines population-wide in order to "combat the pandemic of heart disease in women," how many politicians and healthcare professionals will have taken the time to look at the evidence behind these recommendations? But we will have, and can make a more informed choice about what we want to eat.
This article is the Szwarc's second. The first , published May 2, pointed out:
A major medical paper on primary heart disease prevention admitted that cardiovascular disease risk factors have proven useless for predicting heart disease among our population and that reducing risks factors doesn't translate into reduced clinical disease or fewer premature deaths.
Sounds like our complaints about self-proclaimed "evidence-based" labels need a truth-in-labeling watchdog.
