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John C. Bailar III, MD
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health Washington, DC

JAMA. 1992;267(3):361.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—Browner et al¹ concluded that an average reduction in fat intake from 37% of calories to 30% would add no more than 3 to 4 months to life expectancy in the United States. This conclusion is far more uncertain than would be apparent to the nonspecialist.

The authors' elaborate mathematical model used data from many different sources. The model has not been validated; each of the data sources is subject to uncertainty, and the errors and approximations may interact in unexpected ways. The following are some examples.

Browner et al considered only the direct effects of reducing fat intake as such. Other benefits, such as weight loss and increased intake of vegetables and fruits, were omitted. They limited their conclusions to coronary heart disease (CHD) and certain cancers; they ignored other health effects, positive or negative, such as any adverse effects of reducing serum cholesterol levels . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Deputy Editor (West), and Bruce B. Dan, MD, Senior Editor.

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