The official wall of fat disinformation may finally be giving way to the facts
For years I’ve been warning you not to listen to all these nonsensical warnings about fat being Public Enemy Number One.
Our government has spent 35 years pushing a diet of unhealthy carbs and harmful additives down our throats — all because they were low in fat.
But it looks like some sanity is finally entering the picture. Two of the country’s leading nutritionists are warning that skipping out on beef, eggs and other healthy sources of fat could be undermining your health and even shortening your life.
And our government may finally be on the verge of admitting that its three-decade war on fat was a deadly mistake… one that left a trail of obesity, diabetes and heart disease in its wake.
For once, it didn’t include another arbitrary limit on how much dietary fat or cholesterol we should consume. Actually, it proposed dropping the limit on fat consumption altogether.
The DGAC is the panel of independent scientists who submit recommendations for our federal nutritional guidelines every five years. And for 35 years they’ve pushed a low-fat diet, all while adult obesity rates have doubled and cases of childhood obesity skyrocketed by 300 percent.
And as Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and Dr. David Ludwig, from Tufts and Boston Children’s Hospital, recently wrote in an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association, it’s high time the government admitted they’ve been misleading you about fat.
Placing limits on fat in our diet “has no basis in science,” they wrote, and the “evidence clearly shows” that certain fats are good for us — especially our hearts.
Now, most of us may not pay too close attention to the federal nutritional guidelines — or any other advice the government offers, for that matter.
But as Mozaffarian and Ludwig point out, these guidelines have wide-ranging implications for what we — and our kids — eat. The current guidelines force food companies, restaurants and even government nutrition programs to limit our access to healthy fats and stuff us full of carbs and food additives instead.
For example, the National School Lunch program recently banned serving whole milk to kids. But they kept non-fat flavored milk sweetened with high fructose corn syrup on the menu!
Then there’s the Nutrition Facts Labels that the FDA makes such a big fuss about. Those labels are regularly scaring people off of nuts, olive oil and other healthy foods by claiming they’re dangerously high in fats.
“Many people don’t realize how far the science has advanced in recent years… demonstrating the lack of benefit, and the potential for harm, for focusing on total fat,” Mozaffarian said.
Now, of course, we’re not out of the woods yet. The new dietary guidelines still have to be approved by the USDA and the department of Health and Human Services — something they will decide on later this year.
And you know better than to expect all good news from the government. The guidelines still contain an outdated warning about saturated fats… like you’d find in butter and coconut oil… which experts now consider essential to a healthy diet while posing no real heart risks.
In fact, saturated fats help raise your HDL (good) cholesterol and often have vitamins like K2 that are essential to good heart health.
But this is nothing but a bunch of frightened scientists hedging their bets. Remember that groups like the DGAC, USDA, NIH — and even the American Heart Association — aren’t in any rush to admit that they’ve been completely wrong for 35 years.
But that’s their problem, not yours. Your only concern should be doing what’s best for you and your family. Even if it means paying no attention to those people behind the curtain who have been telling us things that have long since been discredited by science.
Sources:
“Dietary guidelines for Americans shouldn’t place limits on total fat intake” Tufts University, June 23, 2015, Science Daily, sciencedaily.com
“Experts applaud dietary guidelines that lift dietary fat cap” Parker Brown, June 24, 2015, Medpage Today, medpagetoday.com
