I’ve been saying it all along: A low-fat diet isn’t the answer.
Based entirely on my non-scientific experience living in Italy, I think a diet rich in natural foods is best, even if those foods are high in fat (like olive oil). People long before me have lauded the virtues of the Mediterranean diet, and I’m a strong believer. Processed foods, and foods with lots of preservatives, are going to be harder for your body to break down. Better to eat pure creme fraiche than a box of Snackwells.
Of course, like I said, this is based on nothing other than the fact that both times I lived abroad, my body felt 100 times better than it had when I was in the states. I ate more, and was less active, but didn’t gain weight. My entire system just felt cleaner. I never got stomach aches, or felt sick after eating. And, my mom recently sent me a National Geographic article naming Sardinians as some of the longest-living people in the world. So I believe it.
But don’t listen to my half-cocked theories. Checkout people who actually know what they’re talking about:
There is a common belief that Americans get fat because they eat too many carbohydrates. The idea is that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet leads to weight gain, higher insulin and blood glucose levels, and more diabetes, even if the calories are the same as in a higher-fat diet. That did not happen here.
Others have said the opposite: that low-fat diets enable people to lose weight naturally. But that belief was not supported by this study.
As for heart disease risk factors, the only one affected was LDL cholesterol, which increases heart disease risk. The levels were slightly higher in women eating the higher-fat diet, but not high enough to make a noticeable difference in their risk of heart disease.
Actually, my theory is that Americans get fat because we don’t have the kind of access to fresh and affordable pure foods that many Europeans do; because our food culture is one based around pleasure in mass consumption rather than pleasure in taste and quality; and because we’re fairly sedentary people. Again, half-cocked theories, and I’m not trying to posit that “people are fat because they eat too much McDonalds.” But there is something going on culturally that can’t be explained by simple genetics. That doesn’t mean “fat is bad,” either; I’d say there’s something going on culturally with anorexia too, and we don’t see many “thin is bad” messages around us. Anyway, I digress.
The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women ages 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.
“These studies are revolutionary,” said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. “They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy.”
Yep. Plus, cool that this study was done on women.