There's something funny about that report. I think the phrase "added fats" doesn't quite mean what you think it does - e.g. a hamburger or a slab of bacon doesn't have any added fat, but Totino's Pizza Rolls do. Our intake of added everything has gone up because we're eating more processed foods.

The amount of saturated fat consumed has been dropping steadily for decades. Mostly it's been replaced by polyunsaturated fats, but if I remember correctly, the total fat consumption has dropped slightly.

I think it IS fructose that is the problem -- however, not that it is inherently evil, but that human bodies were probably adaptively designed to have a LITTLE of it in late summer to late Fall and gain as many fat cells as possible to help them survive the winter. Has some unpleasant results besides that but, in the minimal amounts available prior to recently, and with the otherwise healthy lifestyle when only whole foods mostly meat were an issue, I'm sure the survived-through-winter genes got selected to carry forward for obvious reasons. Now we have not only a lot of it but a staggering amount of it in the standard american diet (SAD), and it works just as well as it always did for fat -- and just as badly as it always did for other areas.

So yes you could say that it's merely that there's too much of it. But measuring by today's average food supply, almost any of it is probably too much, unless it's limited to produce and those within reason and the person is otherwise normal weight and metabolism and healthy. That's a whole lot of IFs.

Yeah, it's fat in processed foods as well as fat used for cooking/cooking oils.

Yeah. "No added sugar!" doesn't mean there is no sugar in something. In fact it may be drowning in high intensity sugar from grapes and apples, as well as any natural sugars the product has, as well as any natural carbs that turn to sugar/glucose in the body -- but if they didn't actually "add" SUGAR with a capital S, that specific thing, they can say that.

I recall reading somewhere that fat has fallen as a percentage but has actually increased in terms of overall fat grams consumed ... because we are eating more carbs and more in general. Maybe I'm wrong.

I grabbed this off some website, not sure if accurate:

Myth: Americans have successfully cut the amount of fat in their diets.

Fact:
While many of us could benefit if this were true, in actuality Americans are not eating less fat, but have decreased the percent of calories that comes from fat in our diets. This may sound like semantics, but it is not-there is a real explanation. According to Ronette Briefel, Dr.P.H., R.D., Senior Research Epidemiologist and Nutrition Policy Advisor at the National Center for Health Statistics, "Between the 1970s and the 1990s, Americans decreased their intake of total fat from about 37 percent of calories to about 34 percent of calories. Yet, during this same time period, average adult calorie intake increased by approximately 300 calories," adds Briefel. This increase in caloric consumption explains why the decline in percent of total calories from fat can be confusing. Fat consumption actually increased from around 81 grams per day in the late 1970s to about 83 grams per day in the early 1990s.

This indicates that gram-wise there has generally been a decline:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/...11/ai_53885191/

Actually, that article points out something that might get confused in other sources: Total fat consumption decreased from 1965 to 1990 but increased (in men only) from 1990 to 1995. Percentage of fat intake decreased over the entire period.

Here is more info. Be nice to see some updated numbers.

http://www.jacn.org/cgi/reprint/18/3/207.pdf

About 5 years later:

http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.htm


Meat Consumption at Record High

Now more than ever, America is a Nation of meat eaters. In 2000, total meat consumption (red meat, poultry, and fish) reached 195 pounds (boneless, trimmed-weight equivalent) per person, 57 pounds above average annual consumption in the 1950s (table 2-1). Each American consumed an average of 7 pounds more red meat than in the 1950s, 46 pounds more poultry, and 4 pounds more fish and shellfish. Rising consumer incomes, especially with the increase in two-income households, and meat prices in the 1990s that were often at 50-year lows, when adjusted for inflation, explain much of the increase in meat consumption. In addition, the meat industry has provided scores of new brand-name, value-added products processed for consumers’ convenience, as well as a host of products for foodservice operators.

Nutritional concern about fat and cholesterol has encouraged the production of leaner animals (beginning in the late 1950s), the closer trimming of outside fat on retail cuts of meat (beginning in 1986), the marketing of a host of lower fat ground and processed meat products, and consumer substitution of poultry for red meats since the late 1970s–significantly lowering the meat, poultry, and fish group’s contribution to total fat and saturated fat in the food supply. Despite near record-high per capita consumption of total meat in 2000, the proportion of fat in the U.S. food supply from meat, poultry, and fish declined from 33 percent in the 1950s to 24 percent in 2000. Similarly, the proportion of saturated fat contributed by meat, poultry, and fish fell from 33 percent in the 1950s to 26 percent in 2000.


Eating Out Cuts Milk, Boosts Cheese Consumption…
In 2000, Americans drank an average of 38 percent less milk and ate nearly four times as much cheese (excluding cottage, pot, and baker’s cheese) as in the 1950s (table 2-2).

Consumption of beverage milk declined from an annual average of 36 gallons per person in the 1950s to less than 23 gallons in 2000. Consumption of soft drinks, fruit drinks and ades, and flavored teas may be displacing beverage milk in the diet. Big increases in eating away from home, especially at fast-food places, and in consumption of salty snack foods favored soft drink consumption.

The beverage milk trend is toward lower fat milk. Whole milk represented 92 percent of all beverage milk (plain, flavored, and buttermilk) in the 1950s, but its share dropped to 36 percent in 2000.

Average annual consumption of cheese (excluding full-skim American and cottage, pot, and baker’s cheeses) increased 287 percent between the 1950s and 2000, from 7.7 pounds per person to 29.8 pounds. Lifestyles that emphasize convenience foods were probably major forces behind the higher consumption. In fact, more than half of our cheese now comes in commercially manufactured and prepared foods (including food service), such as pizza, tacos, nachos, salad bars, fast-food sandwiches, bagel spreads, sauces for baked potatoes and other vegetables, and packaged snack foods. Advertising and new products–such as reduced-fat cheeses and resealable bags of shredded cheeses, including cheese blends tailored for use in Italian and Mexican recipes–also boosted consumption.

…and Swells Use of Salad and Cooking Oils and Shortening
Americans’ mid-1990s push to cut dietary fat is apparent in the recent per capita food supply data, which show a modest (8 percent) decline in the use of added fats and oils between 1993 and 1997, from 69 pounds (fat-content basis) per person to just under 64 pounds. As a result of consumer concerns about fat and mandatory nutrition labeling beginning in July 1994, food processors introduced over 5,400 lower fat versions of foods in U.S. supermarkets in 1995—97, according to New Product News, a trade magazine based in Albuquerque, NM.

But the decline in average consumption of added fats was short lived. Between 1997 and 2000, per capita consumption of added fats jumped 17 percent, from 64 pounds per person to 74.5 pounds. Fat plays an important role in enhancing the flavor of foods. Many consumers found the taste of the new low fat (3 grams of fat or less per serving) and fat-free versions of foods unacceptable. Accordingly, many companies reformulated their low-fat and fat-free products in the late 1990s, adding some fat to improve taste. Some consumers, who rejected the low-fat and fat-free versions, have accepted reduced-fat products (1/3 less fat than full-fat versions). Many other consumers have resumed eating full-fat versions. According to a 2000 Roper Reports survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans 18 or older, the percentage of Americans who say they are eating "pretty much whatever they want" was at an all-time high of 70 percent in 2000, up from 58 percent in 1997.

Although Americans apparently have relaxed their efforts to curb consumption of added fats, they are choosing to eat healthier fats. Olive oil and canola oil–high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats that lower blood levels of bad cholesterol but not good cholesterol–captured 23 percent of the salad and cooking oil market in 2000, up from less than 4 percent in 1985.

Average use of added fats and oils in 2000 was 67 percent above annual average use in the 1950s (table 2-3). Added fats include those used directly by consumers, such as butter on bread, as well as shortenings and oils used in commercially prepared cookies, pastries, and fried foods. All fats naturally present in foods, such as in milk and meat, are excluded.

Americans in 2000 consumed, on average, three-and-three-fifths times more salad and cooking oil than they did annually in the 1950s, and more than twice as much shortening. Average use of table spreads declined by 25 percent during the same period.

In the 1950s, the fats and oils group (composed of added fats and oils) contributed the most fat to the food supply (41 percent), followed by the meat, poultry, and fish group (32 percent). By 1999, the fats and oils group’s contribution to total fat had jumped 12 percentage points to 53 percent, probably due to the higher consumption of fried foods in foodservice outlets, the increase in consumption of high-fat snack foods, and the increased use of salad dressings. Margarine, salad dressings and mayonnaise, cakes and other sweet baked goods, and oils continue to appear in the top 10 foods for fat contribution, according to recent USDA food intake surveys, which indicates the ongoing prevalence of discretionary fats in Americans’ diets.

It says Fact so it must be true.

That's all pretty interesting, and I realize the diet approach I'm trying is really kind of a throwback to the 1950s... I'm going for higher-fat, low-moderate protein approach... so I'm seeking fattier meats but curbing overall protein intake from meats and other sources, and I'm having more full-fat milk products, and avoiding as much as possible most vegetable and nut oils.

Let me get that straight. Calories have increased by 300 per day, and mostly in the form of carbohydrates. Yet, they are blaming the explosion in obesity on an extra 2 gram of fat a day???? Oh yeah... that extra pat of butter you put on your bread made you balloon to 300 lbs, don't you know. That's the power of fat!

So we added 300 calories, 18 of them in fat.
The rest, at least according to various presentations I've seen, are basically in carbohydrate.
So it's obviously fat to blame.
Math. Who needs it?

That quote was attributed to me in your posting, but I was quoting someone else and making a sarcastic remark.