Word: fiber
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...claim to have special health benefits. At last someone in Washington seems to be listening. Condemning the "Tower of Babel" in the nation's grocery stores, Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan last week proposed tough new regulations that would require manufacturers to provide precise details on fat, fiber, cholesterol and other nutritional contents of their foods. Said Sullivan: "Some food labels are hard to read and understand, and frankly some unfounded health claims are being made in the marketplace. It's a real mess...
...intentioned as it may be, the A.H.A. is stepping into a quagmire by trying to serve as a dietary oracle. Too often scientific ground shifts, and today's notion of sound nutritional advice becomes tomorrow's myth. The latest case in point: oat bran. Two years ago, the high-fiber grain was elevated to alimentary sainthood after a few studies showed that people who ate a diet rich in the stuff enjoyed a significant drop in their cholesterol levels. Doctors began recommending the grain to patients, and food manufacturers rushed to add it to everything from muffins to tortilla chips...
Last week the halo slipped. According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, oat bran has no special power to reduce cholesterol levels. In fact, it works no better than low-fiber grains and causes more bloating and diarrhea than some. In a study performed at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Dr. Frank Sacks and colleagues randomly switched 20 healthy men and women between two six-week diets: one contained 100 grams of oat bran daily, the other 100 grams of low-fiber wheat. Cholesterol levels dropped an average 7.5% -- no matter the diet...