Dietary advice and heart disease: a nursing dilemma?

This paper reviews the debate concerning the relationship between dietary fats and heart disease. The paper also addresses the questions "should nurses persuade patients with heart disease to follow a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet?", "If so, will patients be less liable to a heart attack?" and "are such recommendations based on valid scientific evidence?". The author examines the recent evidence which is critical of such dietary regimens, and claims that much of the dietary advice given by nurses to these patients is biased, misleading and scientifically unfounded.