Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” said French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin nearly 200 years ago. French intuition has since been complemented by a dose of American investigation. According to the results of a recent study, eating a diet high in fat may make you fat, but on its own, it probably won’t give you cancer.

For some, that may be reason enough to go running back to the snack cupboard with open arms. But those truly concerned about their health can still find plenty of reason to abstain.

The $415 million Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) project recently found that low-fat diets have no statistical effect on heart disease, breast cancer or colorectal cancer when compared to a control group with no dietary restrictions. They also showed in passing that carbohydrates do not make women fatter, more prone to heart disease or diabetes.

Conducted on thousands of post-menopausal women, the study has become a shining star to anti-dieters, since the purported link between dietary fat and cancer has long been a source of second-thoughts for would-be high-diners. Considering the media’s demonization of fats in the past, with journalists proclaiming the “American obesity epidemic” and the rampant popularity of the documentary “Super Size Me,” fatty-food freaks have celebrated the new findings with the resounding chorus, “the fat fad is over!”

All is not lost for the calorie-counters. Research maintains that high-fat foods encourage obesity, a constant health risk, and that there are carcinogenic properties to certain fried and charred meals.

This, coupled with the narrowness of the selected subjects in age and gender, suggests that the study is not entirely applicable to all people. Overindulgence is still as evil as always, even if that’s a sad thought.

However, there is hope. The French, known to consume more high-fat foods than Americans, also experience a lower national rate of heart disease. This may initially seem to support the WHI project findings, but consider this: The French are found in medical studies to be more physically active, eat smaller portions and drink more wine. Though their obesity levels are rising, they are still lower than ours, and enjoy lower rates of heart disease.

The beneficial effects of antioxidants in wine are still being studied, but much research has been done on the benefits of exercise. Dr. Joanne Manson, who was involved in the WHI project, also helped investigate obesity in women ages 34 to 59, a much younger age range than the dietary fat reduction study. The research group found that obesity and lack of exercise were independently tied to risk of coronary heart disease.

In essence, this information says that fatty foods may not be killing Americans, but our lack of exercise still is. Becoming a more active person is one of the main ingredients to living a healthy life, and it has everything to do with lifestyle and culture.

In America, cubicles are the norm, adults watch over 30 hours of television a week, consume 53 gallons of soft drinks a year, and spend an hour a day in a car, according to the U.S. census. Anyone who pretends the inactivity of this lifestyle is perfectly healthy is delusional. When comparing the average everyday lives of the French and Americans, it is easy to spot the differences in lifestyle that help make France a heart-healthier country.

All of this, of course, is assuming that the WHI project is trustworthy. Recently, critical stem cell and cancer research falsification has cast doubt on scientific research, and more than one news agency has twisted a story to suit its needs. How are readers to tell the difference?

Simply put, money. The largest project of its kind, the WHI project’s list of authors is a massive paragraph long. Unlikely to ever be sponsored so richly again, and supported by the scientific results of various other research papers, the study amassed peer criticism, interest and review. (The original report is also free to the public.)

The most popular criticism of the study design is that consumers should use a new dogma, one that distinguishes between “good” and “bad” fats, instead of worrying about total fat consumption. These scientists claim that some fats, such as olive, canola and peanut oil, are healthy for the body, while saturated and trans fats are main contributors to disease.

They point to the fact that the study’s generic overhaul of fat reduction resulted in very little of each fat type being reduced. Less reduction of the bad fats translates to more statistical occurrence of cancer and heart disease.

Applying the data from the study to everyday people can also be a problem. No rousing cry can be made on behalf of the masses when women between the ages of 50 to 79, given monthly health checkups and allowed to dine without restrictions prior to the study, are the basis for critical health finds. Not all Americans fall within this range.

Peer analysts also say that long-term development of cancer and heart disease may have been brewing in the subject pool before the study was conducted. Though research was drawn out over a period of eight years, investigators suggested that a “more focused diet and lifestyle intervention” might “improve risk factors and reduce cancer/heart disease risk.”

In essence, they do not want to rule out the risk of a regimen of fatty foods without first increasing the difference in diets between the experimental and control groups, as only 8.2 percent total fat reduction was recorded.

If even the researchers are unsure, then we should be too.

Whether the criticisms are true or not, what it all boils down to is this: Postmenopausal women probably won’t benefit from a small reduction in dietary fat, but a moderate health regimen still carries the chance of one day saving your life.