The Fat Myth: Why Everything You Know About Dietary Fat Is Probably Wrong
Do you carefully trim every visible fat off your meat, order egg white omelets, and choose fat-free everything? I too was convinced that dietary fat was the enemy.
Then I started asking a simple question: if avoiding fat works so well, why did I get fat? As I researched the question became, why did obesity and metabolic disease explode during the exact decades we all went low-fat?
The Timeline That Doesn't Make Sense
The low-fat crusade began in earnest in the 1970s and 1980s. Americans dutifully reduced their fat intake, and food manufacturers created thousands of low-fat and fat-free products.
But instead of getting healthier, we got sicker. Obesity rates tripled. Diabetes rates soared. Heart disease remained the leading cause of death.
Something doesn't add up.
The Research Foundation That Crumbled
When I traced the low-fat recommendations back to their origins, I found research with serious methodological problems that somehow became the foundation for national dietary guidelines.
The famous studies that launched our fear of fat had limitations and biases that should have prevented them from shaping policy. But once established, these guidelines took on a life of their own.
What We Replaced Fat With
Here's the part of the story that rarely gets discussed: when food manufacturers removed fat from products, they had to replace it with something to maintain flavor and texture.
That something was usually sugar, refined carbohydrates, and industrial seed oils. The "healthy" low-fat foods might have been worse than the full-fat versions they replaced.
The French Paradox That Isn't
France has high saturated fat consumption but low heart disease rates. This observation was labeled a "paradox" because it didn't fit the fat-causes-heart-disease narrative.
But what if France isn't the paradox? What if our assumptions about fat and heart disease are the real problem?
What Recent Research Actually Shows
Large-scale studies conducted in recent decades have failed to confirm the saturated fat-heart disease connection. Some research even suggests that the fear of saturated fat might have been misplaced all along.
But updating guidelines is slow, and in the meantime, most doctors still give advice based on outdated assumptions.
The Individual Response Factor
Not everyone responds to dietary fat the same way. Some people thrive on higher-fat diets while others do better with different approaches.
The one-size-fits-all "avoid fat" recommendation ignores massive individual variation in how bodies process and respond to different macronutrients.
What This Means for Your Health
The fat myth kept us eating low-fat processed foods while avoiding nutrient-dense whole foods that contain natural fats. We might have been doing the exact opposite of what would support our health.
In my upcoming book, I reveal:
The specific flaws in the research that created fat phobia
What large-scale recent studies actually show about dietary fat
Why we replaced fats with potentially worse alternatives
How individual responses to fat vary dramatically
The role of different types of fats in health
Rethinking Everything
If we got fat wrong for 50 years, what else might we be getting wrong? The fat myth reveals how medical recommendations can persist long after the evidence supporting them crumbles.
Want to discover more nutritional myths that might be shaping your food choices? Subscribe to my blog for weekly insights that question dietary dogma.