Economist: Why Everything You Heard About [Eating] Fat is Wrong

"The case against fat [in diets] would seem simple," writes the Economist, in a review of a new book entitled The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz.

Fat contains more calories, per gram, than do carbohydrates. Eating saturated fat raises cholesterol levels, which in turn is thought to bring on cardiovascular problems. Ms Teicholz dissects this argument slowly. ...

... the vilification of fat, argues Ms Teicholz, does not stand up to closer examination. She pokes holes in famous pieces of research—the Framingham heart study, the Seven Countries study, the Los Angeles Veterans Trial, to name a few—describing methodological problems or overlooked results, until the foundations of this nutritional advice look increasingly shaky.

The opinions of academics and governments, as presented, led to real change. Food companies were happy to replace animal fats with less expensive vegetable oils. They have now begun abolishing trans fats from their food products and replacing them with polyunsaturated vegetable oils that, when heated, may be as harmful. Advice for keeping to a low-fat diet also played directly into food companies’ sweet spot of biscuits, cereals and confectionery; when people eat less fat, they are hungry for something else. Indeed, as recently as 1995 the AHA itself recommended snacks of “low-fat cookies, low-fat crackers…hard candy, gum drops, sugar, syrup, honey” and other carbohydrate-laden foods. Americans consumed nearly 25% more carbohydrates in 2000 than they had in 1971.

In the past decade a growing number of studies have questioned the anti-fat orthodoxy. Ms Teicholz’s book follows the work of Gary Taubes, a science journalist who has cast doubts on the link between saturated fat and health for well over a decade—and been much disparaged for his pains. There is increasing evidence that a bigger culprit is most likely insulin, a hormone; insulin levels rise when one eats carbohydrates. Yet even now, with more attention devoted to the dangers posed by sugar, saturated fat remains maligned. “It seems now that what sustains it,” argues Ms Teicholz, “is not so much science as generations of bias and habit.”

Interestingly, government pushed the high-carb/low-fat food pyramid on an entire generation. Now we're told we have an obesity epidemic. Teicholz's book, which contains "well over 100 pages of notes and citations" and "covers decades of nutrition research," may explain why low-carb diets are increasingly successful and popular in reversing weight gain.

OCare: Progressives Pick Winners & Losers

"Unlike drug addicts, alcoholics, or the obese — all of whom represent higher-than-average medical costs — smokers are the only such group with a pre-existing condition that ObamaCare penalizes," reports William La Jeunesse at Fox News.

It allows insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50 percent more than non-smokers for an identical policy, depending on the state and any subsidies the person might qualify for. [snip]

A study by nonpartisan Institute for Health Policy Solutions found some smokers could pay as much as 33 percent of their income in health care premiums, well in excess of what ObamaCare considers "affordable" health care.

The study presented three scenarios:

1. The premium for a young, non-smoker earning roughly the minimum wage will cost $708. The same policy for a smoker would cost $3,308, or up to 400 percent more.
2. Before subsidies, a non-smoker who is 59 or older would also pay $708 for a "silver" or mid-level policy. However, a smoker of the same age would pay $5,908.
3. In a worst-case scenario, an older couple who smokes could be "literally impoverished" by ObamaCare premiums, said the report. That couple could pay an $11,352 health care premium, or one-half their annual income of $23,000. By comparison, a non-smoking person over 59 years old would pay 90 percent less, or just $952 after federal subsidies.

It seems that Progressives have an insatiable appetite for controlling other peoples' lives and choices, whether it's the amount of salt they eat or the size of the soft drinks they buy. Remember that Progressives were the primary drivers of the Prohibition of alcohol in the early 1900s, too. 

About that New Year's Dieting Resolution...

If you're one who follows Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations with a New Year's resolution to shed a few pounds, you might want to avoid the USDA's dietary guidelines. Cameron English explains:

While blaming lack of exercise, overeating, and (this week) poor parenting, the real culprit has been almost entirely overlooked: The awful dietary advice dispensed by mainstream medical science over the last 30 years. If we want a healthier, slimmer population, we have to stop eating the sugar-laden diet so many experts have recommended to us.

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) dietary guidelines are the gold standard for healthy eating, according to most experts. The problem is that these recommendations promote a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet based on grains like bread and rice. These kinds of foods consist almost entirely of carbohydrates. When you digest carbohydrates, they are converted into sugar in your bloodstream, the same sugar found in ice cream, soda, potato chips, and all the other junk foods most people would recognize as unhealthy. Since high blood sugar is toxic, your body produces a hormone called insulin to bring it down to a reasonable level. The trouble with this, however, is that insulin brings down your blood sugar by converting it to fat and sending it into your fat cells to be stored. There are many problems with this process...