Are you afraid of fats?

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Replies

  • robininfl
    robininfl Posts: 1,137 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    Not a single person in this thread has answered that they were still worried about fats.

    Ha! That's true. And funny when there are so many defatted items on the shelves here; and when we go out to breakfast the diet option is an "egg white omelette" so you can avoid the egg fat.

    I have never tried a low fat diet, partly because the foods that are defatted are mysterious to me. What, exactly, is low fat mayonnaise made from, if mayonnaise is made of oil and egg yolks? I've made mayonnaise. It is literally emulsified fat. Non fat mayo can't be food.

    Actually I can trace my personal initial recognition that eating fat does not equal getting fat to the summer of 1988 - this was when I finally realized I liked avocados, and all summer I ate avocado and cream cheese sandwiches, on bagels or pitas, with onions and sprouts and stuff. Fat sandwiches, essentially. This did not make me fat. I remember worrying about it, but nothing happened.

    Which means that even when I was still disordered around eating and obsessive and hung up about everything that passed my mouth, and was pretty severely underweight by current BMI standards, I did not really fear fats in foods.
  • selina884
    selina884 Posts: 826 Member
    newmeadow wrote: »
    Do people in the UK still get perms, wear gold lame parachute pants, sport shoulder-padded blouses, accessorize with forehead sweatbands, listen to boom boxes and read Leo Buscaglia books?

    not sure if funny or rude.
  • gonetothedogs19
    gonetothedogs19 Posts: 325 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    Not a single person in this thread has answered that they were still worried about fats.

    But tens of millions are afraid of fats. That's the first thing they look for on the label. They think they can gouge on pretzels because they contain no fat (or little fat?).

    People buy 0% fat yogurt because it has no fat, not because it has fewer calories. And we have to stop that way of thinking.
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
    edited September 2016
    Hornsby wrote: »
    Not a single person in this thread has answered that they were still worried about fats.

    But tens of millions are afraid of fats. That's the first thing they look for on the label. They think they can gouge on pretzels because they contain no fat (or little fat?).

    People buy 0% fat yogurt because it has no fat, not because it has fewer calories. And we have to stop that way of thinking.

    1) I pay zero attention to fat in food. Calories first, protein second. That often means buying reduced- or no-fat products.

    2) You seem to be taking the responses in this thread out of context to go on your own rant about fats. Why?
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,281 Member
    After reading an article that pointed to the fact that the low fat craze is what fueled the wild increase in heart attack deaths. That during the push for low fat ..no one used the good fats of olive oil, avocado..nuts... has lead to heart disease in the huge n umbers we face today.
    Since that.. i use olive oil every day and eat avocado in many dishes a week. There are healthy fats.. you should include them in your diet.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited September 2016
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    No...but reducing fat is also a good way of reducing calories...fat is 9 calories per gram. A lot of people consume too much fat...the SAD is basically a high fat, high carbohydrate diet...not a good combo...most people eating the SAD could stand to reduce both fat and carbohydrates...and more specifically carbohydrates coming from free sugars and other nutrient deficient sources.

    This is the myth that won't go away. Fat has 9 calories per gram, so it makes you fat. Really? Who cares how many calories per gram it has?

    Two jumbo eggs, a strip of bacon and coffee has a ton more fat than a bagel with low-fat cream cheese (or margarine) and 12 ounces of orange juice. So which breakfast has far fewer calories and may provide better satiety? That's right, the fatty bacon and eggs.

    Time to bury this myth about fat once and for all. Fat in in itself does not make you fat.

    The new US nutrition labels will no longer provide the number of fat calories. That proves it.

    Way to misinterpret or distort his comment.

    He didn't say that fat makes you fat. He said that reducing fat can be a good (I'd say easy) way of reducing calories. Worked for me. For example, I took a normal meal I'd make and added less oil or butter or less cheese, or both. Lots of foods I used to add cheese to, I don't. Oil I use much more sparingly. Those are changes that reduced calories significantly and yet are almost unnoticeable by me (there are other ways to add flavor if you need).

    Well of course you shouldn't cook with more oil or more butter than you need. You could also eat less of the stuff you are putting in the oil or butter, whether it contains lots of fat or little fat.

    I did that too, with some things, but the biggest and least noticeable chance was from reducing fats (and overall reducing mindless eating).
    The no-fat mantra culminated in the 1990's disaster of horrible and tasteless Snackwell Cookies. They were flying off the shelves because they contained no fat. Same calories as cookies with fat, but that did not matter because Americans were totally brainwashed by the stupid USDA and their junk science.

    I think we all know the Snackwells story, but I think you have the history wrong, somewhat. We never were told to eat lots of refined carbs or sugar in place of fat or low-nutrient foods (let alone to just eat more of them in addition to the fat we otherwise consumed, which is in fact what we did, as a country), and certainly not that calories did not matter. I agree that the assumption that lowering fats would *necessarily* lead to reduced calories was wrong--which no one said here, but it's also worth understanding that (1) the US never actually reduced per capita consumption of fat, fat's gone up a bit, carbs even more (more because of what's easy, cheap, and available than any nutrition advice, IMO), and (2) if people actually ate like the USDA recommends we'd be a lot less fat and eat a lot more vegetables and less sat fat AND refined carbs -- less fast food, for example, which for the biggest users tends to include both a lot of fat and a lot of refined carbs, and be high in calories as a result.

    Absolutely no one here is saying "worry about fat." You are distorting the posts you are responding to in order to argue against an argument no one is making, which is IMO rude. Like I said above, I remember the low fat thing from the '80s and '90s, but since I've been interested in weight loss and nutrition (around 2000), low fat has not been a thing. For those claiming it is I have to wonder if you think the Clinton running for president is Bill and are excited to talk to your friends about the latest episode of Friends, if not the funny things Bill Cosby and his TV family get up to.

    (Apologies to NewMeadow for ripping off her post, also.) ;-)
  • akf2000
    akf2000 Posts: 278 Member
    edited September 2016
    I'm afraid of other people's but my own smell quite good (to me).
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
    akf2000 wrote: »
    I'm afraid of other people's but my own smell quite good (to me).

    I...what?

    Did we go from "fats" to "fahhts?"
  • gonetothedogs19
    gonetothedogs19 Posts: 325 Member
    edited September 2016
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    No...but reducing fat is also a good way of reducing calories...fat is 9 calories per gram. A lot of people consume too much fat...the SAD is basically a high fat, high carbohydrate diet...not a good combo...most people eating the SAD could stand to reduce both fat and carbohydrates...and more specifically carbohydrates coming from free sugars and other nutrient deficient sources.

    This is the myth that won't go away. Fat has 9 calories per gram, so it makes you fat. Really? Who cares how many calories per gram it has?

    Two jumbo eggs, a strip of bacon and coffee has a ton more fat than a bagel with low-fat cream cheese (or margarine) and 12 ounces of orange juice. So which breakfast has far fewer calories and may provide better satiety? That's right, the fatty bacon and eggs.

    Time to bury this myth about fat once and for all. Fat in in itself does not make you fat.

    The new US nutrition labels will no longer provide the number of fat calories. That proves it.

    Way to misinterpret or distort his comment.

    He didn't say that fat makes you fat. He said that reducing fat can be a good (I'd say easy) way of reducing calories. Worked for me. For example, I took a normal meal I'd make and added less oil or butter or less cheese, or both. Lots of foods I used to add cheese to, I don't. Oil I use much more sparingly. Those are changes that reduced calories significantly and yet are almost unnoticeable by me (there are other ways to add flavor if you need).

    I think we all know the Snackwells story, but I think you have the history wrong, somewhat. (let alone to just eat more of them in addition to the fat we otherwise consumed, which is in fact what we did, as a country), and certainly not that calories did not matter.


    We never were told to eat lots of refined carbs or sugar in place of fat or low-nutrient foods

    Nobody bought Snackwell cookies because they thought refined carbs and sugar were better than fat. They just wanted to avoid fat.

    Absolutely no one here is saying "worry about fat." You are distorting the posts you are responding to in order to argue against an argument no one is making, which is IMO rude.

    The thread is entitled "Are You Afraid of Fats." I am trying to make a point tens of millions of Americans do fear fat, and that's the first thing they look for on the label. FINALLY, after decades, the labels, beginning in 2018, will no longer show the percentage of calories from fat.

    If it were up to me, I would not even have fat on the nutrition labels, because there is nothing wrong with fat.
  • akf2000
    akf2000 Posts: 278 Member
    There was a great MFP blog about this - you guys DO read the blog right, it's got some great stuff.

    "How the Sugar Industry Manipulated Science":
    http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/sugar-industry-manipulated-science/

  • gonetothedogs19
    gonetothedogs19 Posts: 325 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    No...but reducing fat is also a good way of reducing calories...fat is 9 calories per gram. A lot of people consume too much fat...the SAD is basically a high fat, high carbohydrate diet...not a good combo...most people eating the SAD could stand to reduce both fat and carbohydrates...and more specifically carbohydrates coming from free sugars and other nutrient deficient sources.

    This is the myth that won't go away. Fat has 9 calories per gram, so it makes you fat. Really? Who cares how many calories per gram it has?

    Two jumbo eggs, a strip of bacon and coffee has a ton more fat than a bagel with low-fat cream cheese (or margarine) and 12 ounces of orange juice. So which breakfast has far fewer calories and may provide better satiety? That's right, the fatty bacon and eggs.

    Time to bury this myth about fat once and for all. Fat in in itself does not make you fat.

    The new US nutrition labels will no longer provide the number of fat calories. That proves it.

    Calories per gram might be important to someone who knows it's calories that lead to weight loss/gain.

    That makes no sense. What does calories per gram have to do with the number of calories you consume?

    I just gave an example of two breakfasts - the one that is loaded with fat has far fewer calories than the high-carb, high-sugar alternative.

    And if the USDA is no longer providing the number of fat calories, obviously it is not fat calories that make you fat.

    Calories per gram matters to volume eaters.
    selina884 wrote: »
    I am in the uk, and it's sugar they keep banging on about more not fat
    Anyway I don't track my fat intake or sugar

    yeah actually it was on the radio this morning.
    Food industries have a 5 year target to reduce sugars in their meals by 20%.

    ..but definitely low sugar is the most "recent" craze alongside "high protein" diets.

    I think it's confused the entire population and people don't understand whats good for them anymore.

    Anymore???

    What the heck is a "volume eater?"
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Someone who likes to eat larger portions vs. smaller ones, who feels more satiated by eating a larger volume of food.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Nobody bought Snackwell cookies because they thought refined carbs and sugar were better than fat. They just wanted to avoid fat.

    And yet they continued eating lots of fat, just in other foods. The misunderstanding was that low-fat=low calorie, and so they overate something the gov't never said was good for them. That's not really the fault of the USDA.
    I am trying to make a point tens of millions of Americans do fear fat, and that's the first thing they look for on the label.

    I think this is not all that true, unless the people you are referring to are way behind the times. Also, it's not consistent with how people actually eat (the US diet is not low fat). In that fat is an easy way to overconsume calories, being aware of it, as well as other foods that are easy to overconsume -- which is basically what cwolfman was saying that sparked this particular back and forth between you and me -- is a sensible thing.

    If people actually did what the USDA recommended, they'd eat much better than they do. As it is, they didn't eat more fruits and veg, didn't decrease fat, didn't substitute whole grains for refined, or limit "junk food." What they did was decide that various obvious "junk food" products could be added in addition to all other calories being eaten because "healthy." So I'd say that the problem wasn't really that people feared fat, but that people assumed that anything low fat couldn't lead to weight gain and was inherently "healthy."
    If it were up to me, I would not even have fat on the nutrition labels, because there is nothing wrong with fat.

    I'm in favor of disclosure of accurate facts on nutrition labels, but agree that calories from fat is a stupid one to have. As for grams of fat, I strongly disagree. There's nothing wrong with protein or carbs, either, but it's nice to know the breakdown. (And if you read Fat, Sugar, Salt, added fat played its role in the increased calories in the US diet, even during the supposed fear of fat era.)
  • gonetothedogs19
    gonetothedogs19 Posts: 325 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Someone who likes to eat larger portions vs. smaller ones, who feels more satiated by eating a larger volume of food.

    Other than a salad, what food can you eat in "volume" that does not pack on calories? My assumption that "volume" eaters are not chowing down on salads.