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Conventional dietary advice for the last 30 years has been something like this: “Eat less fats.”

Well, for over 30 years Americans have been cutting out saturated fats and the result? More obesity, more diabetes, and more heart disease. Recent studies are showing that the “health professionals” who decided to pick saturated fats as the culprit for many of our ailments and weight problems, might have the wrong target in their sights.

A recent article in Scientific American says,

Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

A study published on the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (March 2010) reported in a study that consumption of saturated fats had no association with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease.

And conclusions like this from studies in recent years seems to indicate that the refined carbohydrates that most Americans eat in place of saturated fats might be the culprit linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular disease.

Most low-fat refined carbs cause us to be more hungry and eat more which in turn leads to weight gain, not weight loss. Those same carbs also stimulate fat storage and inflammation, and can mess with our insulin sensitivity.

Now, I’m not advocating that you go out and gorge yourself on saturated fats, but I do think there is something to dig into in this whole “eat fat to lose fat” notion.

Tags: carbs, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, eat fat lose fat, processed, saturated fat, stroke

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 9:07 pm and is filed under food, nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.