Looking back to my earlier years when I was growing up, I can remember the boom of the “low fat” or “no fat” craze of the food world. Salad dressings, cookies, pudding, and almost anything else you could think of had a lower or no-fat variety. Scientists back then told us that eating fat was bad. As a result, many of us took this to mean that if something doesn’t have much fat in it, we can eat a lot of it! Bring on the Snackwells cookies and white bread! Now, some scientists are starting to realize that they were wrong.
There was a great article in Time Magazine back at the end of June called Eat Butter: Ending the War on Fat that outlined how scientists were wrong to tell everyone that saturated fats were the enemy. More recent research has shown that it is actually carbs, processed foods, and refined sugars that are to blame for the obesity epidemic. Those who follow Mike Dolce or a paleo diet are likely thinking “tell me something I don’t know!” but keep in mind that the average American doesn’t spend time investigating what’s healthy for them. They’re influenced by what the television is telling them and what the labels on the packaging in grocery stores are trying to sell as a healthy option.
You may have noticed on these same grocery store shelves a lot of products proclaiming to be “trans fat free.” This means that the artificial trans fats once used to enhance the flavor of foods are slowly being eliminated. We now realize that trans fats raise the bad kind of cholestorol in our bodies while lowering the good kind of cholestorol. This reduction of trans fats only applies to the artificial trans fats used as an additive (often listed as “partially hydrogenated oils”) and not the natural trans fats found in meat and dairy items.
So what does this mean in the end? Not a whole lot to anyone who’s been eating healthy or done a little bit of research on a balanced diet in the past few years. Avoid refined sugars and carbohydrates, eat more natural foods, and eat a balanced diet. Everything is fine in moderation, so if you slip and have a bad day where you eat some cookies, don’t dive right in and eat the whole bag. Put it back in the cupboard, right the ship, and get back on course towards your healthier life.
For some guys out there, I’m sure this seems like the ultimate diet. Eat only sausages and drink only beer and still lose weight. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it’s not. It’s just a matter of numbers.
There are a lot of myths and conspiracies in the world, from UFOs to 9/11 and ghosts as well, and there are a wide range of shows devoted to these topics. But myths can apply to your health, too. These are in the forms of myths like eating fatty foods can make you fat, foods with carbs can make you fat, and things along those lines. But which ones are fact and which are fiction?