The Unintended Consequences of the Low Fat Diet

In January 1977, after two days of hearings and no scientific consensus, Senator George McGovern’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs cobbled together the first low fat “Dietary Goals for the United States.”

Afterwards, “all hell broke loose,” said one government expert. Amid contention and clamor, our first official healthy diet went “low fat.” On the cover in bold letters:

“Avoid Too Much Fat, Saturated Fat, and Cholesterol.”

In December 1984, the National Institutes of Health hosted a consensus conference in an attempt to end the still simmering “diet heart” debate. According to Basil Rifkind, the ruling conference chair: “There is no doubt that low fat diets will afford significant protection against coronary heart disease to every American over age 2.”

While the conference effectively silenced the low fat critics, 25 years later, we must ask, “So, how are the children doing?”

Today - for the first time - two-year-olds have Type II diabetes. Obese teenagers are developing heart disease. The combination of obesity and diabetes – what the late Dr. Robert Atkins called “diabesity” – is promoting record levels of slow, suffocating heart failure.

In Good Calories, Bad Calories, science writer Gary Taubes wrote, “Good science is rooted in reality and becomes more compelling over time. Bad science is kept alive only by the natural reluctance of its advocates to admit they are wrong.”

Cereal Killer, Part I, The Test of Time, documents the unintended consequences of the low fat diet: Pyramid schemes and sugary cereals associated with insulin resistance, high blood sugar and widespread diabetes. Low fat has failed the test of time, but altering the conventional wisdom is very difficult.

The stakes are high. Since 1980, the federal guidelines have been revised every 5 years. With 2010 on the horizon, the Corn Growers Association (i.e., Cargill, ADM) is already targeting mothers with an 18-month, $30 million campaign to sweeten the increasingly sour image of high fructose corn syrup, already 10 percent of American calories.

Cereal Killer is a skeptical inquiry, a brief investigative history of “low fat.” Part II, Life in the Fat Lane, combats decades of extreme fat-bashing by providing a long overdue definitive analysis of the value and wholesome nature of natural saturated fats and foods rich in cholesterol.