I find it interesting that the Ornish plan followers had the least improvement in heart desease risk factors. Isn't that the only reason that anyone would follow that awful plan.

Maybe "they" (i.e., the doctors who did the study) did publish the triglyceride numbers, and the reporters who wrote the news reports thought the reading public wouldn't understand anything but the cholesterol numbers. We have yet to see the actual study. I moused around at tufts.edu but their news releases etc seem to be a couple of weeks behind -- maybe in another few days we'll be able to get the full story.

Well, like the cholesterol numbers, all the diets were in the same ballpark -- the Atkins plan brought up the rear at 4%, but the best of the four (the Ornish plan) led to a whopping 6% of weight loss -- whoop-de-do! I suspect the numbers for all the diets would be a lot better if the study participants had been allowed to choose the plan they would follow. Being "draftees," there was probably a lot of "going AWOL" over the course of the year -- for people in all the diets.

Like Lisa said, their conclusion was what they wanted it to be, they ignored the studies cited by Atkins, and the more recent ones which show that dieters CAN take in more calories on a lowcarb regimen, and lose more weight than lowfat dieters. The "establishment" has been way too kind to Ornish for too long - his entire "scientific proof" rests on 3 studies DONE BY HIMSELF. Can you imagine what they would have done to Dr A if he'd tried that? Increasingly, too, Ornish is drifting off into LaLa land, incorporating various kinds of mysticism. Soon, when his followers keel over from low HDL, high triglycerides, he will just smile beatifically and say, well, I guess that was just the reality they chose.

Which is another reason why this study is not a particularly good one. In real life, people choose which way they want to eat to lose weight. Choosing for the participants practically guaranteed the results that they got simply through atrition. As someone already mentioned, I feel particulary sorry for the poor saps that got stuck with Ornish's plan. I don't think I'd make it through a whole week on that, maybe not even a whole day! :p
And...I'd still like to see the triglyceride results for the different plans since that would change the entire cardiac risk profile.

Okay spotted a news article about this study, which gave pretty ugly picture of how this study was conducted:

The participants were told to follow the diets for 2 months to the best of their abilities, and the remaining 10 months _to the extent they wanted_!

Now that is one crap study I say. Imagine people having been spoonfed and brainwashed to believe fat is the root of all evil, then told they can follow this high-fat diet to the extent they want... yeah I can absolutely see them all being very enthusiastic about it.

As a side-note, I doubt very many followed the Ornish diet either, lol!

So, I'd just throw this study to the junkbin. Big headlines over an absolutely ridiculously conducted study.

About the "bum's wrap"
 

<warning, off topic and big rant>

Watersidhe:

It is NOT just the possessive that's the problem.

"I would assume that 'bum wrap' refers to something that is 'packaged'"

I'm sorry to jump on you, but inventing a completely different etymology for a misspelled phrase to explain the mistake is just plain silly. If you're going to stick with your spelling, at least stick with the original meaning of the phrase and explain the misspelling. I'm pretty sure what happened here was that somebody in the past didn't understand what "rap" meant, decided to change it to "wrap" and made up a meaning -- this is *not* a separate phrase. FYI, OED says that "rap" means "a criminal accusation, charge" and that it frequently appears in the phrase "bum rap, a false charge, an undeserved punishment." And I can't find any mention of "bum wrap" in any legitimate source. I really hate it when people justify poor spelling with "it's colloquial" or "everybody's doing it." This is not the 18th century any more, and we should be happy about that!

<end rant>

Holly

I wanna see, I wanna see!

Can you please post the link to where you saw this? Thanks!

Yeah, but just think how those poor schmucks sentenced to Ornish felt when they heard they only had to follow it to the extent they wanted! Woo-hoo! Yeah, baby!


Oh, I don't know. It will probably cut more ice in discussions on fark.com, with my friends, or my sister than other studies, like the Atkins-funded study a few months back.

Oh, and I nominate ewert for the Mighty Hunter award! Good work finding that study, friend!