What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?:

“At the very moment that the government started telling Americans to eat less fat, we got fatter. The truths about why we gain weight and why it is so hard to lose it just might turn out to be much different from what we have been led to think.

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The crucial example of how the low-fat recommendations were oversimplified is shown by the impact — potentially lethal, in fact — of low-fat diets on triglycerides, which are the component molecules of fat. By the late 60’s, researchers had shown that high triglyceride levels were at least as common in heart-disease patients as high L.D.L. cholesterol, and that eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would, for many people, raise their triglyceride levels, lower their H.D.L. levels and accentuate what Gerry Reaven, an endocrinologist at Stanford University, called Syndrome X. This is a cluster of conditions that can lead to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

It took Reaven a decade to convince his peers that Syndrome X was a legitimate health concern, in part because to accept its reality is to accept that low-fat diets will increase the risk of heart disease in a third of the population…” NY Times Magazine