Last week in my entry about increased protein intake and government recommendations I mentioned that I was also going to discuss the farce of low fat diets. Low fat diets were the crazy for a LONG TIME. We were constantly bombarded with advertisings and products claims that scream “0 grams of fat per serving”, “Fat FREE”, “Low Fat Food”…you get the point. As a result fat became the devil. People started cutting fat out of their diet until it was as low as possible.Even with all the low fat madness the average fat intake of Americans didn’t even drop below 25% of total calories.
In the mid 1990’s fat became cool again with the popularity of low carb diets. Now there were “healthy fats”.
Side note: I decided I hate the term “healthy fats” it is dumb as an argument could be made for the inclusion of each type of fat for health reasons with the exception of industrially produced trans fats. You’ll never hear me use that term again.
Back to what I was saying…in the mid 90s fat became cool. More research was being released regarding the great health benefits of a Mediterranean diet (which is moderately high in fat). Product claims switched and now they boost “healthy fats” (there’s that damn term again). The media turned on the government and the national dietary guidelines saying that the government’s low fat recommendations were wrong and partly to blame for the obesity epidemic. Everyday people jumped on this bandwagon, bashing the dietary guidelines for their low fat ways, and supported the latest fad diet which promoted high intakes of “healthy fats” (ugh).
Sorry to leave you hanging but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the rest of this article (so make sure to come back!).
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