Eating fat makes you fat?

There are only three macro nutrients in our diet. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats. As a young kid, I still remember being taught the food pyramid, and what these three macro nutrients represented. Proteins are supposed to be the building blocks of your body, responsible for building your muscles, etc. Carbohydrates give you energy and are the fuel for your day. These two are the “good guys” which we should have plenty of, and if we did we were going to grow up strong and healthy.

The third group, of course, was fats, and what a bad boy this was supposed to be. After all, if one were too big for one’s height--horizontally challenged in today’s political correct world–-one was called. Ergo, if one ate too much of fats, it stands to reason that one would become fat as well. “Ang tambok, makatambok” as we like to say in Cebuano.

The powerful thing with words is that they stick for a long time, and so well into my adult years, I instinctively tried to maximize my intake of carbohydrates, and was purposely wanting to avoid consuming fats of all kinds.

Carbohydrates gave me energy, right? And fats would only make me fat? How hard could it be then to know what and what not to eat.

If only things were so simple.

“Since dietary fat was now the villain of the hour, the ‘Heart Healthy’ recommended diet became a high carbohydrate one. Since carbohydrates in the Western hemisphere tended to be refined, we ate more and more low fat bread and pasta. After all, we weren’t giving up hamburgers for cauliflower and kale, but for bread and big plates of pasta. Through the 1950s and 1960s scientific debate (occasionally very acrimonious) raged back and forth. Some believed that dietary fat was the villain where others, such as John Yudkin, believed that refined carbohydrates were the problem. His book, ‘Pure, White and Deadly—How Sugar is Killing Us’ is eerily prescient, and should certainly win the award for Best Book Title—Ever.

“The low-fat diet, of course, up until that point in time was completely untested in humans. Nobody in history had ever decided to lower the fat content of their diet for health reasons. We had no idea what effect it would have. Of course, this was around the time that we also believed that we could make a more nutritious substance for babies than breast milk. That we were somehow smarter than 20 million years of evolution. So, instead of eating natural fats such as cream, butter and olive oil we turned to purely artificial oils like margarine. Of course, these turned out to kill us with trans-fats but that is a story for another time. We moved away from natural fat and towards refined carbs. So who won? You already know the answer, and we are all the worse off for it.” (“Obesity, A Historical Perspective,” Dr. Jason Fung, 12 June 2017).

Low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt and everything with low fat in it became the huge fad du jour. I still shudder instinctively now at the thought of consuming fat. It had very negative connotations in my memory. All the while, I had thought that this was the villain that I should do my best to avoid.

But carbohydrates and sugar? Nope, they were good for me. As did millions of Filipinos who thought that they were good for them too.

Fast forward many years hence, and now we know there had to be a problem. For we now have Filipinos who have grown up being made to fear fats, for fear that it will make them fat. But guess what, with all the reduced fat craze, the waistline of the Filipino has never been bigger. Someone, somewhere it seems had their ideas about nutrition all mixed up.

Continued next week…