Tweet
we knew it all along...
Good News on Saturated Fat
By John Tierney
Should we be reconsidering the conventional wisdom on saturated fat? Yes, according to Gary Taubes’s interpretation of the new report in The New England Journal of Medicine on a two-year diet experiment in Israel.
The Israeli researchers found that people on a relatively low-fat diet lost less weight (6 pounds) than those who ate a low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diet (10 pounds). These relatively modest weight losses were interpreted as discouraging news for dieters, and they also set off a debate on whether the whether the low-carb diet was really an Atkins-style diet, as my colleague Tara Parker-Pope reported.
Mr. Taubes prefers to focus on another aspect of the study: perhaps the best news yet about saturated fat. As I wrote last year, in a column about Mr. Taubes and his book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" the medical establishment originally warned people to avoid all kinds of fat, but subsequent studies kept failing to produce evidence of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Then the supposed experts said the villain wasn’t just any fat but specifically saturated fat. But now their recommendations are being undermined yet again by research, Mr. Taubes says.
By John Tierney
Should we be reconsidering the conventional wisdom on saturated fat? Yes, according to Gary Taubes’s interpretation of the new report in The New England Journal of Medicine on a two-year diet experiment in Israel.
The Israeli researchers found that people on a relatively low-fat diet lost less weight (6 pounds) than those who ate a low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diet (10 pounds). These relatively modest weight losses were interpreted as discouraging news for dieters, and they also set off a debate on whether the whether the low-carb diet was really an Atkins-style diet, as my colleague Tara Parker-Pope reported.
Mr. Taubes prefers to focus on another aspect of the study: perhaps the best news yet about saturated fat. As I wrote last year, in a column about Mr. Taubes and his book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" the medical establishment originally warned people to avoid all kinds of fat, but subsequent studies kept failing to produce evidence of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Then the supposed experts said the villain wasn’t just any fat but specifically saturated fat. But now their recommendations are being undermined yet again by research, Mr. Taubes says.
Comment