The Skinny On Fat

FORGET what you think about fat. It’s time to reassess your diet – and reap the benefits.

IT’S tragic how fat has earned such a bad reputation in diet circles. The truth is that when it comes to healthy eating, unsaturated fat reigns supreme but the problem is that most people still don’t understand the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats. 

Loading your plate with good fats can help to supercharge your health and achieve a better body, and in his new book Eat Fat, Get Thin, renowned American health expert Dr Mark Hyman seeks the truth behind some of the biggest fat misconceptions. 

“So many people – doctors, patients and eaters alike – are all confused about fat and still hold on to myths and misinformation, but knowing what to eat and how to use dietary fats can help you regain your health and ideal body weight,” he says.

A Big Fat Mess

TO find out why fat is so demonised, we have to rewind back to the 1970s when levels of obesity and heart conditions started to rise. In a bid to tackle the increasing rate of disease, official dietary guidelines were set, which urged an increase in carbohydrate intake to 55 – 60 percent of total daily calories and a reduced fat intake of 30 – 35 percent. The general message was that fat makes us fat and causes heart disease and type 2 diabetes. So instead, the advice was to eat more sugars and carbs and cut back on saturated fat from meats, eggs, butter and whole milk. “Quite simply, this turned out to be the largest uncontrolled experiment ever carried out on human beings, and it failed miserably,” says Dr Hyman. This ideology soon spread across the globe and before we knew it, pasta suddenly became a health food and fat a diet derailer.

Lay Down The Fat Foundations