Won't all the fat in a low carbohydrate diet give me breast cancer?

No, it won't. One of the real disgraces of the whole low fat mania of the past twenty years has been the propaganda telling women that they must eat a low fat diet to prevent breast cancer.

It isn't true. I mean, it really isn't true. Just about a year ago, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article in which the results of 7 different studies of the effects of fat restriction on breast cancer were reviewed. The result? Absolutely no protective effect was found whatsoever from a low fat diet. In fact, the researchers were startled to find that a very low fat diet was associated with a higher rate of breast cancer. They tried to explain it away, of course. They said it was probably just an artifact in the research. Low fat diets couldn't possibly be unhealthy, could they?

The Harvard Nurses study, still ongoing, also has looked at the relationship of fat intake to breast cancer -- and once again, the highest rate of breast cancer is found in the women with the lowest fat intake.

In 1996, an Italian study was published in the Lancet, another highly respected medical journal, analyzing diet and breast cancer rates. The lowest rate of cancer was found in the women with the highest fat intake, while the highest rate was found in the women with the highest carbohydrate intake -- especially starch; those "nice" complex carbohydrates we've all been told are so good for us.

Shades of Linda McCartney.

Begins to be clear why the medical researchers are trying to explain this away, doesn't it? How would you like to have to face millions upon millions of women and tell them, "Oh, by the way -- that, uh, healthy low fat diet, with 6 to 11 servings of grains a day, that we've been telling you to eat for the past couple of decades? Probably raises your risk of breast cancer. Sorry about that." I'd be blaming it on an "artifact in the research", too.

We know that breast cancer, like so many of the other diseases that are a scourge in modern, industrialized nations, is strongly associated with high levels of insulin in the blood, or hyperinsulinemia. And we know that restricting dietary carbohydrate is an extremely effective way to lower those levels of insulin.

A low carbohydrate diet, high in healthy, natural, untampered fats, will not give you breast cancer. And it may well be a good prevention.