Low Fat Diets Are Unhealthy and Don’t Work!

Are you still caught up in the low-fat mantra of the past couple decades? Do you think you can’t eat much fat if you are trying to lose weight? These ideas are still so prevalent in our media and in the low-fat products you see everywhere that it’s no wonder you may still believe this. In fact, even many doctors still believe this.

However, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, in 1999-2000, an estimated 64 percent of adults in the United States were either obese or overweight. That’s almost two thirds of the adult population, and one third of our children are now overweight as well. In the past 30 years, the number of overweight children has doubled. In just the past decade, the number of obese people in the U.S. has gone up two and one half times.

Obesity Increasing, But Percentage Fat in Diets Decreasing

Fifty years ago, only a small percentage of the population had problems with their weight. Now it’s an epidemic! All this has happened while we cut back from 40 to around 32 percent fat as a percentage of our diet. Hmm, perhaps a low fat diet is not what we need in order to lose weight!

Low Fat Diets Unhealthy

Low-fat diets not only don’t work, but they’re low in vitamins A & D, they’re not healthy, not natural, and they tend to promote weight gain! Research confirms this statement. The famous Framingham Study that started in 1948 is still going on, and it shows that the more saturated fat, the more calories, and the more cholesterol a person ate, the lower their serum cholesterol! The results also show that the more fat they ate, the less they weighed! In addition, fats including saturated fats are essential for good health. Fat soluble vitamins A & D are found in large quantities only in saturated fat-containing foods like egg yolks, butter, cream, whole milk and liver. Minerals also need fats and the fat soluble vitamin A in order to be properly absorbed and utilized by the body. Calcium needs the fat soluble vitamin D in order to be used properly by the body. So, we are eating less fat as a nation, and getting far less of the fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin D, but are gaining weight.

Less Fat, More MSG

Perhaps another reason for the low fat diets not working is that since fat gives foods much of their flavor, when manufacturers cut out the fat, they add sugar, MSG and other chemicals to the food to enhance the taste. These can all have adverse effects on both our weight and our health. Many researchers believe that it is instead the addition of copious amounts of sugar to our diets that is causing our weight gain. In addition, MSG has weight gaining properties. MSG is fed to laboratory animals in order to fatten them up for experiments in which they need obese rats, so it is no surprise that when we eat a lot of MSG, we gain weight. Watch out, MSG does not have to be labeled as MSG in order to be in your food. In fact, it is used in lots, perhaps even most, of our packaged and restaurant foods today, especially in fast foods.

So in conclusion, eating a low fat diet will not help you to lose weight, in fact, it may well add to your weight gain, so start seeking out healthy types of fats to eat in your diet. Don’t forget to include some of the saturated fats that contain vitamins A and D, as long as you look for meat and dairy products from pastured animals that are out in the pasture eating their natural diets. One resource for pastured animal products is www.eatwild.com