‘Eating fat makes you fat’ idea debunked: dietitian

The science surrounding a low-fat diet has changed but our attitudes haven’t kept up, a dietitian says. The idea that saturated fats were associated with high cholesterol and heart disease was sparked by the Seven Countries Study of middle-aged men in Greece, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Japan, Finland and the U.S. “Fat is not the enemy,” Russell de Souza, a registered dietitian and professor of nutritional epidemiology at McMaster University, said. “What’s more important than the amount of fat we consume is the type of fat we consume.” As one example, he compared the labels on low-fat baked potato chips with regular potato chips. The low-fat chips are lower in fat, but also higher in carbohydrates and sugar. More