The Skinny On Low-fat Food
With the rise of low-fat foods, an obesity epidemic has broken out in Australia. Is this mere coincidence?
You'd be amazed if you stepped back in time and browsed the aisles of a 1970s supermarket. Absent from the shelves would be the glut of fat-free yoghurt, lite
ice cream and 98 per cent fat-free chocolate biscuits. Instead, you'd see rows of full-cream, full-fat produce. You might conclude that people were fatter then. But you'd be wrong. Since the early 1980s, low-fat has become big business and our shops are crammed with fat-reduced, fat-free and lite options. The Australian Dairy Corporation says that 40 per cent of all dairy products are now fat-modified, and the figure is rising. Despite being slaves to the fat-free dogma, we are anything but.
Our bodies are heavier than ever and obesity is now considered to be pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation. In 1980, the rate of obesity in Australia was 6 per cent, by 1990 it had risen to 10 per cent and by 1995 it had skyrocketed to
18 per cent, government health figures say. Kilo for kilo, the average Australian man was 3.6kg weightier in 1995 than in 1985, and the average woman 4.8kg heavier. Considering there wasn't the range of muffins, milks, yoghurts, chocolates, cheeses and creams stripped of their fat content back in 1985, this seems incongruous.
Dietary focus shifted to fat consumption during World War II. When food was scarce, kilojoules were valuable, and main sources were saturated fats and lard. Post-war research into cholesterol found that eating fat raised your risk of heart disease, so the message went out: eat less fat. Later, nutritionists said that cutting fat from
our diet would not only slash our heart problems, but make us skinnier as well, giving birth to the low-fat food industry.
Yet since the 1970s, a growing faction of health experts has been slowly contesting and rethinking the role of fat in our diet. Dr Robert Atkins was the first to say that carbohydrates, not fat, were the main concern, in his now-famous book The New Diet Revolution, which has sold more than 10 million copies since it was first published in 1972. This diet famously advised us not to worry about butter or cream, but about bread and pasta instead.
The same message - low carbohydrates, high fat, high protein - has been relayed over the decades. In the 1990s, US scientist Barry Sears echoed it in his book Enter The Zone, calling the low-fat diet an experiment gone wrong. More recently, British health journalist Leslie Kenton, in her new book Age Power, agreed. "It is time to face facts: the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet has proved itself a failure."
Gary Taubes, author and correspondent for Science magazine, continued this attack on the low-fat diet in a recently published New York Times article, saying that fat is not our waistline's greatest enemy, but carbohydrates are - the very foundation of our food pyramid. His argument, supported in parts by other US experts, is that intake of carbohydrates (in the form of rice, pasta, bread and other dietary staples) raises insulin levels in the bloodstream and encourages the body to store weight. This has also been referred to as Syndrome X.
So, does this mean that after decades of low-fat dieting, we may have swallowed the wrong advice? "There is always the possibility that what we have been told is fallible," says Dr David Crawford, a health expert at Deakin University. "However, the truth is that [obesity] is a very complex picture, and it would be dangerous to look at only one piece of it.
"It would be like saying that obesity
has increased since 1960, space travel commenced in 1960 and, therefore, space travel causes obesity."
Michelle Pink, a dietician at the Australian Dairy Corporation, agrees that other factors should be considered: "We need to look at the the relationship between environment and genetics, examine reduced levels of physical activity and new eating patterns, such as reliance on pre-packaged foods." Importantly, say experts, just because something is labelled low-fat, it doesn't mean it's sugar-free.
"Check the label," advises Professor John Catford, dean of health and behavioural sciences at Deakin University. "There is probably less fat, but not necessarily any fewer kilojoules because of hidden sugars added to improve taste." So the next time you choose a muesli bar over chocolate, read the label. If sugar is high on the ingredients list, the bar may contain as many kilojoules as chocolate and have equal energy. Fat gets a bad rap because it contains nearly double the kilojoules, gram for gram, as carbs or protein.
The other problem with low-fat eating is its psychological effect. You might trade off kilojoules, thinking that because you've cut down on fat in that muffin, you can indulge in more pasta for lunch, which is not the case.
Despite this, many insist the fat-free advice is sound. "For weight loss, low-fat diets work but are more efficient if you can reduce kilojoules at the same time," says Professor Ian Caterson, of the human nutrition unit at Sydney University. "Australians are eating less fat [men went from 106g a day to 100g a day from 1985 to 1995], but we are also eating more in total, and this counterbalances the reduction in fat."
One thing experts agree on is that the formula to achieve weight loss is simple: the more energy you put in, the more you have to burn off. Says Dr Caryl Nowson, a nutrition lecturer at Deakin University, "Any diet that has a negative energy balance [you burn off more than you consume] will result in weight loss, wherever those kilojoules came from: protein, carbohydrate, fat or even alcohol. It is the law of physics. If we are taking in more energy than we are expending, we will gain weight."
THE FACTS ON FAT
* Obesity is a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more; overweight is a BMI of 25-30. The ideal BMI is 20-25. To calculate, see www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm
* More than 50 per cent of Australian adults are estimated to be overweight
or obese.
* Diseases linked to obesity include cardiovascular disease, orthopedic problems, polycystic ovary syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
* Obesity and related diseases cost taxpayers $840 million annually.
* Almost one quarter of our children (aged two to 17) are overweight or obese.
* A national nutrition survey in 1995 found that children aged two to 18 consumed 500,000 litres of soft drink, containing 58 tonnes of sugar, each day.
* It also found they ate 27 tonnes of potato chips a day, containing 9 tonnes of fat. They ate 140 tonnes of hot chips a day, or 21 tonnes of fat.
Source: John Catford (Deakin University)
You mean I have to get off my chair?
We chuckle at Homer Simpson's beer gut, but most of us do so slouched in a lounge chair with the remote control in hand. It is estimated that we do half the physical activity of a decade ago.
We may go to the gym, but how many of us circle the block until we find the closest parking spot? As for our car, it now comes with cup holders, making it easy to consume while we drive.
The bottom line is how much activity you do. A one-hour sweat session at the gym is good, but so is all the incidental exercise throughout the day, such as climbing stairs, running for the bus, picking up toddlers and walking to the shops. The more active your lifestyle, the less likely you are to be overweight.
You'd be amazed if you stepped back in time and browsed the aisles of a 1970s supermarket. Absent from the shelves would be the glut of fat-free yoghurt, lite
ice cream and 98 per cent fat-free chocolate biscuits. Instead, you'd see rows of full-cream, full-fat produce. You might conclude that people were fatter then. But you'd be wrong. Since the early 1980s, low-fat has become big business and our shops are crammed with fat-reduced, fat-free and lite options. The Australian Dairy Corporation says that 40 per cent of all dairy products are now fat-modified, and the figure is rising. Despite being slaves to the fat-free dogma, we are anything but.
Our bodies are heavier than ever and obesity is now considered to be pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation. In 1980, the rate of obesity in Australia was 6 per cent, by 1990 it had risen to 10 per cent and by 1995 it had skyrocketed to
18 per cent, government health figures say. Kilo for kilo, the average Australian man was 3.6kg weightier in 1995 than in 1985, and the average woman 4.8kg heavier. Considering there wasn't the range of muffins, milks, yoghurts, chocolates, cheeses and creams stripped of their fat content back in 1985, this seems incongruous.
Dietary focus shifted to fat consumption during World War II. When food was scarce, kilojoules were valuable, and main sources were saturated fats and lard. Post-war research into cholesterol found that eating fat raised your risk of heart disease, so the message went out: eat less fat. Later, nutritionists said that cutting fat from
our diet would not only slash our heart problems, but make us skinnier as well, giving birth to the low-fat food industry.
Yet since the 1970s, a growing faction of health experts has been slowly contesting and rethinking the role of fat in our diet. Dr Robert Atkins was the first to say that carbohydrates, not fat, were the main concern, in his now-famous book The New Diet Revolution, which has sold more than 10 million copies since it was first published in 1972. This diet famously advised us not to worry about butter or cream, but about bread and pasta instead.
The same message - low carbohydrates, high fat, high protein - has been relayed over the decades. In the 1990s, US scientist Barry Sears echoed it in his book Enter The Zone, calling the low-fat diet an experiment gone wrong. More recently, British health journalist Leslie Kenton, in her new book Age Power, agreed. "It is time to face facts: the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet has proved itself a failure."
Gary Taubes, author and correspondent for Science magazine, continued this attack on the low-fat diet in a recently published New York Times article, saying that fat is not our waistline's greatest enemy, but carbohydrates are - the very foundation of our food pyramid. His argument, supported in parts by other US experts, is that intake of carbohydrates (in the form of rice, pasta, bread and other dietary staples) raises insulin levels in the bloodstream and encourages the body to store weight. This has also been referred to as Syndrome X.
So, does this mean that after decades of low-fat dieting, we may have swallowed the wrong advice? "There is always the possibility that what we have been told is fallible," says Dr David Crawford, a health expert at Deakin University. "However, the truth is that [obesity] is a very complex picture, and it would be dangerous to look at only one piece of it.
"It would be like saying that obesity
has increased since 1960, space travel commenced in 1960 and, therefore, space travel causes obesity."
Michelle Pink, a dietician at the Australian Dairy Corporation, agrees that other factors should be considered: "We need to look at the the relationship between environment and genetics, examine reduced levels of physical activity and new eating patterns, such as reliance on pre-packaged foods." Importantly, say experts, just because something is labelled low-fat, it doesn't mean it's sugar-free.
"Check the label," advises Professor John Catford, dean of health and behavioural sciences at Deakin University. "There is probably less fat, but not necessarily any fewer kilojoules because of hidden sugars added to improve taste." So the next time you choose a muesli bar over chocolate, read the label. If sugar is high on the ingredients list, the bar may contain as many kilojoules as chocolate and have equal energy. Fat gets a bad rap because it contains nearly double the kilojoules, gram for gram, as carbs or protein.
The other problem with low-fat eating is its psychological effect. You might trade off kilojoules, thinking that because you've cut down on fat in that muffin, you can indulge in more pasta for lunch, which is not the case.
Despite this, many insist the fat-free advice is sound. "For weight loss, low-fat diets work but are more efficient if you can reduce kilojoules at the same time," says Professor Ian Caterson, of the human nutrition unit at Sydney University. "Australians are eating less fat [men went from 106g a day to 100g a day from 1985 to 1995], but we are also eating more in total, and this counterbalances the reduction in fat."
One thing experts agree on is that the formula to achieve weight loss is simple: the more energy you put in, the more you have to burn off. Says Dr Caryl Nowson, a nutrition lecturer at Deakin University, "Any diet that has a negative energy balance [you burn off more than you consume] will result in weight loss, wherever those kilojoules came from: protein, carbohydrate, fat or even alcohol. It is the law of physics. If we are taking in more energy than we are expending, we will gain weight."
THE FACTS ON FAT
* Obesity is a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more; overweight is a BMI of 25-30. The ideal BMI is 20-25. To calculate, see www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm
* More than 50 per cent of Australian adults are estimated to be overweight
or obese.
* Diseases linked to obesity include cardiovascular disease, orthopedic problems, polycystic ovary syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
* Obesity and related diseases cost taxpayers $840 million annually.
* Almost one quarter of our children (aged two to 17) are overweight or obese.
* A national nutrition survey in 1995 found that children aged two to 18 consumed 500,000 litres of soft drink, containing 58 tonnes of sugar, each day.
* It also found they ate 27 tonnes of potato chips a day, containing 9 tonnes of fat. They ate 140 tonnes of hot chips a day, or 21 tonnes of fat.
Source: John Catford (Deakin University)
You mean I have to get off my chair?
We chuckle at Homer Simpson's beer gut, but most of us do so slouched in a lounge chair with the remote control in hand. It is estimated that we do half the physical activity of a decade ago.
We may go to the gym, but how many of us circle the block until we find the closest parking spot? As for our car, it now comes with cup holders, making it easy to consume while we drive.
The bottom line is how much activity you do. A one-hour sweat session at the gym is good, but so is all the incidental exercise throughout the day, such as climbing stairs, running for the bus, picking up toddlers and walking to the shops. The more active your lifestyle, the less likely you are to be overweight.
