Health nuts

We've been told that nuts are bad for us because of their high fat content: Half the calories in nuts come form fat, which is more than whole milk, ground beef, or chesses. So the fat makes you fat and clogs your arteries with cholesterol. Right?

Nope.

As usual, the traditional nutritionists and dietitians have it wrong.

The Nurses' Health Study, a massive epidemiological project that attempted to explain all matters nutritional by interviewing 86,000 nurses found that women who ate more than five ounces of nuts a day had a 32% lower risk of having a nonfatal heart attach and a 39% lower risk of having a fatal heart attack compared to women who avoided nuts.

Of course, one of the problems with this study - and the researchers admit it - is that the women who ate nuts tend to have healthier lifestyles in general. But Dr. Frank Hu, head of the study, reported to WebMD Medical News that "even when we adjusted for factors like smoking, exercise, and consumption of fruits and vegetables, nuts showed up as a powerful defense against heart disease."

Half cooked meat study

While decrying meat and fish as cancer causing, an Oxford University group says its research proves that olive oil will prevent cancer of the colon. Both of the group's suppositions - that olive oil is good and that meat and fish are bad - are based on a survey so broad that anything could be proved - or disproved.

The study was based on a comparison of cancer rates, diets, and olive oil consumption in 28 countries, including England, the United States, Brazil, Columbia, Canada and China. The average reader will be impressed with the statistics: "Wow, the report must be authentic look at the number of people investigated!"

If the researchers are going on general consumption figures from the governments of these countries, which they probably are, the numbers will be loose, to say the least. With a survey of this magnitude, the uncontrollable variables will be in the hundreds. Do the Chinese use bat blood in their gravy? Do Africans mix their hamburger with monkey intestines? And, worst of all, do all the other more or less civilized countries reported eating meat overcooked, as in that favorite international cuisine McDonald's?

This is an amateurish study of no consequence. Forget it. Eat all the meat you want with its natural fat. Raw meat is the most nutritious, but at least stop cooking at medium rare.