subject: Is Dietary Fat the Cause of Obesity? [print this page] Is Dietary Fat the Cause of Obesity? Is Dietary Fat the Cause of Obesity?
When you see somebody who is severely obese, one tends to call them one thing: fat. And that in and of itself seems to pin the blame on dietary fat; after all, doesn't it make sense to blame the consumption of fat on the increase in the individual's body fat? At first glance it does, and since the 1970's nutritionists have done exactly that, telling us to dial down our fat consumption as much as possible while increasing the amount of carbs that we consume. However, let's take a closer look at the situation: can we really pin the current obesity epidemic on just fat alone?
First, let's look at the lifestyle of a typically obese individual. This person is probably inactive, spends much of their time not exercising, eats a diet that is high in refined, high-GI carbs, smokes and drinks. This is unfortunately a very complex situation where many factors are at play, each affecting this individual's health. To pull out fat as the sole culprit, and say that by eating a low fat diet that they will lose all their weight and become healthy is clearly ingenuous.
Further, when we examine our ancestral diets, we discover that our ancestors actually ate a diet that was much higher in fat and lower in refined carbs. These people were also free of many of the ills that plague our modern societies, suffering almost not at all from heart attacks, diabetes, obesity and other similar problems. However, the quality of the fat they ate was very different; they ate very little saturated fat, but rather ate high amounts of mono and polyunsaturated fat, while eating tons of very fibrous carbs. Activity levels were usually much higher as well, resulting in individuals that were very healthy, lean, but that also ate larger amounts of fat.
What we have to take from this is that not all fats are good, and neither are all carbs. When it comes to making broad, sweeping statements, fat is bad' clearly does not make sense when one considers that fish oil and olive oil, both of which are considered to be excellent sources of nutrition, are part of the fat family, while sugar and refined high-glycemic starches are both bad quality carbs when consumed in large quantities. As with all things that pertain to the human body, it is usually foolish to simplify, attractive as such maxims may seem.
