Reduce Fats in Diet

Those in the medical profession have failed to point out the most significant fact concerning the specious campaign by the Omaha millionaire and his friends in the soybean industry to pressure food processors into switching from saturated to unsaturated fats (“Health Crusader Targets Nabisco in Latest Battle Over Use of Tropical Oils,” March 2), so I shall do so.

Numerous studies, dating back to the 1961 Wadsworth Veterans’ Administration Hospital study, have shown that substituting unsaturated fats for saturated fats in the diet does indeed reduce mortality from heart disease but raises mortality from cancer, so that the total death rate remains about the same.

Perhaps the most prudent course would be to reduce consumption of fats of all types, as recommended by the National Research Council (“Council Urges Major Changes for U.S. Diet”) in the same issue of the newspaper.

STEVE VICTOR

Los Angeles

The writer is author of “The Lighthearted Vegetarian Gourmet Cookbook.”