Active Low-Carber Forums - Low-Fat is Dead: Fat makes comeback after 3 lean decades

Fat makes comeback after 3 lean decades

Kim Severson, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Click to View

For years in the test kitchens of Cooking Light magazine, virtually every recipe started with low-fat cooking spray. If a little more fat was needed, readers were advised to use margarine.

But no more. The nation's largest-circulation food and fitness magazine still preaches the value of lower fat cooking, but now recipes call for healthy amounts of canola oil, olive oil and -- egads -- even butter.

"We now know the kind of fat is more important than the quantity," said food editor Jill Melton. "We have loosened, and so have our readers."

All over the country, and especially in the food-sophisticated Bay Area, fat, in all its glorious, slick incarnations, is coming back. After three lean decades, chefs, home cooks and even the nutritionists who persuaded us to board the low-fat bus in the first place are rejecting the notion that fat is what makes us fat.

"We're beginning a new kind of balance," said Clark Wolf, a food and restaurant consultant in San Francisco and New York who works with New York University's Department of Nutrition and Food Studies. "In the '80s, we really had food phobias. People were afraid of cheese and butter and eggs."

"In the '90s, we told the nutrition police to go stick it and ate everything but really didn't feel too well," he said. "Now, we have better information about fat." That is, that although fat should still be consumed in moderation, people still need fat -- a balance of all kinds of healthy fat, including some types of saturated fat.

As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's fat-restrictive food pyramid -- its guide to healthy eating -- is crumbling, partly from the fact that fat is just as critical to health as complex carbohydrates and protein.

Within the last year, the federal government declared that no level of a synthetic fat called trans fat (think shortening) is safe to eat. Research on diets laced with olive oils and healthy fats, championed by experts like Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, has shown that the U.S. health policy on fat consumption is flawed.

APPROACH IS OUTDATED

Many dietitians now admit their one-size-fits-all approach to fat consumption is outdated, even going so far as to endorse such former pariahs as highly saturated coconut and other tropical oils.

The shift is driven as much by changing social attitudes as by stark epidemiological evidence: Despite a 30-year low-fat frenzy, Americans are fatter than ever, more than 65 percent classified as overweight or obese.

The nation's obesity rate began to skyrocket in the mid-'80s -- about the same time national low-fat public health campaigns were in full swing. In one year alone -- 1998-99 -- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show that the nation's obesity rate rose an astonishing 6 percent.

Why didn't the low-fat campaign work? Researchers say many low-fat diets can be high in sugar or simple carbohydrates and low in protein. Too many carbohydrates and not enough fat and protein can throw the body's metabolism out of whack, causing weight gain and disease-producing insulin resistance.

Plus, meals loaded with carbs generally aren't as satisfying as meals balanced with fat. To feel full -- what scientists call the satiety index -- people tend to eat more carbohydrate-heavy foods than their body needs. Overall caloric intake goes up, and people gain weight.

So even though the USDA reports that Americans have cut back on fat from 40 percent of calories in 1968 to 33 percent today, the average daily intake has increased from 1,989 to 2,153 calories, according to a joint survey by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

'UNHEALTHY IN ITS OWN RIGHT'

"A lot of people did not try to reduce the amount of food consumed, they just leached the fat out of it," said Dr. Stanley Rockson, head of consultative cardiology at Stanford University. "This was a well-intentioned attempt to get healthy but was unhealthy in its own right."

There are plenty of other culprits in the fattening of America, mainly too much time spent in front of TV and computer screens and not enough time exercising. Soda consumption has increased from 22.2 gallons per person a year in 1970 to 56 gallons per person a year in 1999. And we like big portions.

Still, doctors say a new approach to fat is an important weapon in the obesity battle. The body needs a balance of healthy fats -- polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and saturated -- to function well. Fats do a lot of work, from cushioning organs against shock and insulating tissue to controlling hormones that help with appetite control and cognitive performance, among other things. Too much of one kind of fat -- or simply not enough fat at all -- can throw a person's metabolism out of kilter.

Individuals also need different types of fats in varying ratios. People who don't have special medical considerations such as heart disease can eat a balanced diet that includes a good measure of healthy fats, such as olive oil or oils with a mix of polyunsaturates and mono-unsaturates, like canola. Even the much-dreaded saturated fats, in measured amounts, are important.

"I do think Americans can deal with good fats versus bad fats and good carbs versus bad carbs, but it takes a little bit of learning," said Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and a leading critic of the USDA food pyramid. He argues that saturated fats are not the deadly poison they have been made out to be.

THE 'MEDITERRANEAN PYRAMID'

Willett, the spokesman for the Nurses' Health Study, the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health study in the nation, involving more than 300,000 people, calls his strategy for healthy eating the "Mediterranean pyramid." Although based on the largely vegetable-, nut- and legume-based meals of the traditional Mediterranean diet, it suggests daily consumption of plant and vegetable oils. The USDA pyramid, which Willett considers a failure, groups all oils and fats together and suggests they be used sparingly.

Other researchers believe tailoring fat intake to specific body types is the wave of the future. At UC Davis, food science Professor J. Bruce German and his colleagues are working on diagnostic tools that would recommend which types and amounts of fats individuals should eat based on a host of factors, including exercise levels and blood lipids. It's a far cry from the USDA's blanket approach to nutrition recommendations, German said.

The modern case against fat began in 1957, when the American Heart Association proposed that modifying dietary fat intake would reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease, which had become the leading cause of death in the United States. A decade later, the group recommended that Americans lower fat intake to about 30 or 35 percent of daily caloric intake.

In 1972, two doctors put fat at the center of America's dietary plate. Dr. Robert Atkins championed a high-fat, low-carb diet in his book, "The Diet Revolution," at the same time that Dr. Dean Ornish came out with an American Heart Association-endorsed diet that promoted just the opposite.

Although a few researchers were arguing that a diet laced with healthy fats was key to good health, most experts continued to hammer a simple message: eat less fat. The nation was off on a torturous diet run fueled by dry Melba toast and low-fat cottage cheese.

By the early '90s, low-fat became the nation's fastest-growing food category even as a more sophisticated fat message began to circulate. Research showed the health advantages of fatty acids like omega-3s. The detrimental effects of trans fat, in the form of shortening used in nearly 40 percent of crackers, cookies, pies and other processed food on grocery store shelves, became clear enough that the National Academy of Sciences announced last year that consumers should avoid it entirely.

'ATKINS FOR LIFE' DIET

And Atkins came back with a vengeance. His diet, which allows plenty of foods like steak, cheese and butter, has become undeniably popular, and his new book, "Atkins for Life," is a best-seller.

Restaurants that in the low-fat '80s put little heart symbols next to low- fat "spa" entrees are now cooking no-carb meals with plenty of protein and fat.

At One Market in San Francisco, chef Bradley Ogden points out that a new section of the menu, with strip steaks, double-cut racks of pork and sturgeon with butter-rich bearnaise sauce but no starch, is homage to Atkins.

The low-fat failure gained more popular attention last summer, when Gary Taubes wrote a controversial article for the New York Times Magazine blasting decades of science on which much of the nation's nutrition recommendations are based. Although some of his scientific reasoning has been questioned, the package forced a new level of debate about the quality of diet research.

And the pro-fat revolution continues to make plenty of nutritionists nervous. They worry that the public will interpret fat's re-emergence as an excuse to eat as much as they want.

"The problem is that moderation seems to be the answer, and that is not a great subject for America, home of the all-you-can eat restaurant," says public health researcher Sarah Samuels of Oakland, who in the 1980s helped design a national, $3.5 million low-fat education campaign.

Others are simply bored with the whole thing.

'LOOKING FOR ANSWERS'

"I have this visceral loathing for the swinging -- you can or can't eat this or that," says Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl. "We're all looking for answers, and every couple of years they tell us something else. We don't know what we're doing with this stuff. I think we're all total nutritional idiots."

But doctors and researchers say we'd better wise up and learn the difference between the bad fat in a super-sized order of fast-food fries and a healthy dose of olive oil over a plate of greens.

Fran McCullough, a food and diet expert and cookbook author who in January released "The Good Fat Cookbook," says people will eat better as they return to traditional ways of cooking with unadulterated foods like butter and olive oil.

"There's still a certain amount of 'What the hell, I'm going to eat whatever I want,' and there's a huge amount of anger for how manipulated we've been," she said. "But it's starting to kick in. People who care about what they eat are getting it."
NEW THINKING ON FAT:

-- Mix it up: Strict low-fat diets are dead. Instead, researchers say, eating a mix of healthy fats is key to a good diet.

-- Go tropical: Old devils, including highly saturated coconut and palm oils, are actually healthy fats for many people.

-- Balance it out: Most Americans consume a disproportionate amount of polyunsaturated oils, which can keep the body from absorbing beneficial omega- 3 fatty acids.

-- Buyer beware: Products sold as healthy, cholesterol-free vegetable oils are often so altered by processing that their inherent healthy properties have been stripped away.

Chronicle staff writer Carol Ness contributed to this report. / E-mail Kim Severson at

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