ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996 TAG: 9605020060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOSTON
SOURCE: DANIEL Q. HANEY ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARGARINE a health food? It's rich in the vitamin vital to reducing the chance of heart disease, doctors say.
Don't hold the mayo, after all. Or the margarine or salad dressing.
Evidence is building that reasonable amounts of these foods - shunned by many because they are so high in fat - can be an important part of a heart-healthy diet. Why? They are good sources of vitamin E.
A major study published in today'sThursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that women who get lots of vitamin E-rich food cut their chance of heart disease by almost two-thirds.
Vitamin E ``is the most exciting, interesting area in diet and heart disease at the moment. We don't have the final word yet, but it looks like the potential for reduction in risk could be extremely large,'' said Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Last month, British researchers reported that daily vitamin E pills seem to reduce heart attacks by 75 percent when taken by people with bad hearts. The new study looked at the effect of vitamin E in food alone.
Dr. Lawrence H. Kushi, an epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota, followed 34,486 older women with no outward signs of heart trouble. Just 242 died of heart disease during seven years of follow-up.
Diet seemed to play a big role. The researchers divided the women into five categories, depending on how much vitamin E they consumed in their food. Women who ate the most were 62 percent less likely than those who ate the least to die of coronary heart disease.
Those in the highest consumption group got at least 10 international units of vitamin E per day from food, which is the recommended daily allowance for women. Those in the lowest group got less than five.
Of course, too much high-fat food of any kind is not a good idea, and Kushi noted that the women who benefited didn't overdo it. For instance, mayonnaise consumption was considered to be high if they ate it four times a week.
Besides mayo, other good sources of vitamin E include margarine (especially if made from sunflower, safflower, canola or corn oil), salad dressings, vegetable oil, peanut butter, nuts, wheat germ and eggs.
``The public health recommendation falling out of these studies is clearly that people who are eating diets rich in vegetables seem to be better off,'' said Dr. Lenore Kohlmeier, a nutritionist at the University of North Carolina. ``These can be foods that are rich in fat, too, and still be desirable.''
Indeed, Willett worries that people who think fat and cholesterol are the whole story may do themselves a disservice by switching to such things as fat-free salad dressing.
``One of the unfortunate parts of the fat phobia is that people eliminate major sources of vitamin E in their diets,'' he said.
Vitamin E is one of a group of nutrients known as antioxidants for their ability to offset the damage done by oxygen to the body. The Minnesota study found no sign that two other such nutrients - vitamins A or C - did any good. Vitamin E supplements also did not appear to reduce the risk, although the researchers cautioned that they did not know enough about how long the women had taken the pills to be sure of this finding.
Other recent studies also discount the benefits of beta carotene, the vegetable form of vitamin A.
In January, the National Cancer Institute released two large studies concluding that beta carotene pills do nothing to ward off cancer or heart disease, as many had hoped, and might actually speed up the development of lung cancer in smokers.
Those studies, done by doctors from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, were also published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine.
A strongly worded editorial by Drs. E. Robert Greenberg and Michael B. Sporn of Dartmouth Medical School said the two reports ``unequivocally rule out the possibility that there is even a slight reduction'' in cancer or heart disease from taking beta carotene.
However, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, which represents vitamin makers, raised the possibility that beta carotene blocks the very early stages of cancer development, something the two studies would probably miss.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB