Misleading Headlines

Every time the results of some new study are reported with press releases to the popular press, we get a slew of stupid headlines that oversimplify, overstate, or simply misreport the results of the study.

For example, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, known as JAMA, showed that a low-glycemic index diet worked a bit better than a "high fiber" diet, although the low-GI diet actually included more total fiber than the "high fiber" diet. Both diets were low fat, which means high carbohydrate, and low-carb diets were not tested.

Jenny's blog points out some of the problems with the study as well as providing a link to the full text.

But headlines in various publications include the following:

"High fibre diets bad for controlling diabetes, heart disease." No one said the high-fiber diets were bad, just that they weren't quite as good as the low-GI diet. And as noted, the diet with the slightly better results had more fiber than the "high-fiber" diet. But people reading that headline might start trying to avoid eating fiber.

"Low-glycemic diet best for diabetics, study shows." The study didn't show that the low-GI diet is the best, but simply that it's slightly better than another high-carb diet. They didn't study low-carb diets, but the headline implies it's best of all.

"Diabetes control better with low-glycemic index diet." This isn't quite as bad, but it doesn't say what it's better than.

Of course anyone reading the full article should be able to make up her or his mind about what the study really shows. But how many people read full scientific articles? How many physicians have the time? They'll simply see all the headlines, and similar ones in the medical magazines written for busy general practitioners, and come to the conclusion that low-GI diets are the best for people with diabetes.

One positive thing about all this is that it may help to nudge the American Diabetes Association into admitting that the GI has some utility. The ADA is about the only professional diabetes association in the world that hasn't accepted the concept of the GI.

But the bad thing is that the same people will think the low-GI diets are really the best, and they'll continue to persuade patients to avoid the low-carb diets that many patients have found to greatly reduce their A1c levels.

Recently, numerous research studies that show that low-carb diets can help people with diabetes without having bad effects on other parameters such as lipid levels. But mainstream nutritionists and nutritional researchers can't seem to get beyond the concept that fat is the cause of all our nation's problems. Maybe if we all ate less fat the economy would turn around?

Headlines in the past have been just as misleading as the ones I cited. Some years ago the Diabetes Prevention Program trial showed that prediabetic patients who lost weight with diet and exercise had a 58% reduction in progression to full-blown diabetes during the trial (some of them went on to develop diabetes later despite the weight loss and intensive instructions they received during the trial). All the participants were put on low-fat diets.