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Cochrane reviews on dietary advice for reducing intakes of fat and salt

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 60, pages 926–928 (2006)Cite this article

Professor Truswell's recent discussion (Truswell, 2005) of our two systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Library (Hooper et al., 2000, 2004) focused on the much shorter summary publications published in the British Medical Journal. This is a pity as many of the points he raises were dealt with in the full-length Cochrane reviews. While giving voice to those who criticized our BMJ reviews, he failed to take note of our rebuttals (Hooper et al., 2001, 2003). Here we will deal with the major criticisms he makes of our work.

We agree with Truswell that observational data should be used as part of the nutrition evidence base. This is clearly the case for questions relating to causality where evidence derived from long-term cohort studies is often the only evidence that is available, and possibly ever will be available – for example, effects of obesity on disease outcomes. He considers that “randomisation is not important for dietary experiments in which all participants are exposed to the same experimental diet…” but many questions in nutrition are concerned with long-term effects and with comparisons of alternative options where this design would be useless.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    L Hooper

  2. Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, Clifton, Bristol, UK

    G D Smith

  3. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, London, UK

    S Ebrahim

Authors
  1. L Hooper
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  2. G D Smith
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  3. S Ebrahim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to L Hooper.

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Hooper, L., Smith, G. & Ebrahim, S. Cochrane reviews on dietary advice for reducing intakes of fat and salt. Eur J Clin Nutr 60, 926–928 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602452

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