Excerpt
About a half-century ago, the United States launched a massive public health experiment: The federal government joined nutrition experts in asserting that a low-fat diet would prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer.
Some scientists, worried about unintended consequences, warned the observational studies were weak. Further, clinical trials had not convincingly shown that restricting total fat intake would improve any major health outcome. But those objections weren’t heeded. Obesity and heart disease were increasing, and dietary fat seemed the obvious culprit. If you don’t want fat on your body or in your arteries, the thinking went, don’t eat it.
Unfortunately, that era’s low-fat diet did not work out well. Assuming you can’t get fat on carbohydrates, processed carbs flooded the food supply — sugary beverages, sweetened breakfast cereals, baked potato chips, pretzels, popcorn, fat-free Snackwell’s treats and more. During the same period, rates of obesity and diabetes skyrocketed.