Marc Jakobi

11-2-16

Paradigm Shift: Diets in America

A paradigm shift is characterized by a change in a groups attitude toward a subject. One

interesting example of a paradigm shift comes in the USA's dramatic change in the 1970s and

1980s from a diet containing high fat, specifically animal fat, to a diet characterized by low fat,

and then another subsequent change back to diets high in fat and protein. The first trend was

started due to the overall health decline the U.S. was facing. Many people believed that the

overall health issue and our increasing waistlines were caused by our overconsumption of fatty

foods. Although the push to fat free foods made many Americans more conscious about what

they ate, it could have possibly put our health and weight into a worse situation. There has been

emerging evidence that suggests that the dramatic shift and demonization of fat has been a

detriment to the average American, rather than making them healthier.

One thing that I always think of when it comes to Americas rejection of fatty foods was

something my dad told me. My father is a first generation immigrant from Germany, and when

he first arrived in the America around the 1980s he was amazed by how much Americans

avoided anything with fat even close to it. He always tells me that when he first went shopping,

he wanted to pick up some yogurt, and there was not a single type of yogurt that was labelled

low fat! This sentiment extended to almost all food products. Youd be in a damn bind trying to

find whole milk amidst all the 1%, 2%, low fat, soy, amalgamations of milk, that are usually more

water than they are milk. Even benign things like buttermilk have faced the consequences of

our demonization of fat. Buttermilk is actually one of the natural ways of getting low fat milk, as

its one of the products leftover after making butter. Its actually the milk left after all the fat has

been taken out, in the form of butter, but without knowing this you would probably assume that
buttermilk is inherently bad for you, just because you see butter in the name. And speaking of

butter, what has happened to the image of such an ancient food. The oldest reference of butter

in history dates back to 4.5 thousand years ago. Could our ancestors really have been so

misguided to eat something as bad for you as butter? Nowadays there are many, various,

substitutions to butter that can be found in all supermarkets, sometimes even more commonly

found that butter itself. These substitutes are all made up of different vegetable oils. The best

known one, Unilevers product, I Cant Believe its Not Butter, is made up of a mixture of

soybean oil, water, and palm oil. And while the popularity of products like these are caused by

their advertisement of being a healthy substitute to butter, in actuality vegetable oils like palm oil

have shown to be low-grade inflammation causes. Low-grade inflammation has shown to have

ties to insulin resistance, obesity, and even some metabolic diseases. So instead of being the

healthy substitute like it's being touted as, reality paints a different story. (Aubrey, Allison. "Why

We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom." NPR. NPR, 28 Mar. 2014. Web. 02 Nov.

2016.)

Another substitution we make for classical animal fat is sugar. Sugar is extremely prolific

in U.S. society. Everything we eat is loaded with an insane amount of sugar. Sugar is an

additive we put into food to increase taste, similar to sodium, but it has become so widespread

in what we eat, that it can be attributed to many of the problems we face today. Sugar became

this prominent due to our demonization of fat. Looking at any fat-free yogurt or something like it,

you can easily see how the retailers compensated for the lack of fat. There are easily 20-30

grams of sugar in a single serving of yogurt, and it's directly related to the lack of fat. Without

the naturally existing fat in many of our foods, the taste just isnt there, but by adding sugar we

retain an essence of that flavor. By advertising the reduction of fat, but keeping the underlying

sugar increase quiet, many companies have conned us into believing we are eating healthier
when in reality we swapped a necessary evil in fat, with a real demon in sugar. (Taubes, Gary.

"Is Sugar Toxic?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Apr. 2011. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.)

These facts really make one wonder how the demonization of fat first began in the

United States. According to NPR, Americas relationship with fat took a turn south, in the U.S.

Senate during the steamy days of July 1976. South Dakotas Senator George McGovern called

a hearing in the Senate to discuss the links between diet and disease. McGovern was well

known and respected in the Senate, being a veteran, and failed presidential candidate as the

Democratic Nominee (he lost to Nixon). McGovern throughout his career was primarily involved

in all things food: hunger, agriculture, and nutrition. He was the first director of the program,

Food for Peace, and oversaw the U.S.s distribution of their surplus food supply overseas into

the U.N.s World Food Programme. McGoverns long history with food policy in the Senate led

him to becoming the sole chair of the Senates Select Committee on Nutrition and Human

Needs. Through this committee, McGovern studied and researched the problem of hunger and

nutrition in the United States. Eventually his research culminated in the release of his

appropriately named report, the McGovern Report, which detailed his findings on hunger in

the U.S., while also detailing a new set of nutritional guidelines for the average American. In this

report McGovern called for Americans to radically change their diet, as he believed that what we

ate was the main reason for the radical increase in heart disease. During the hearing where

McGovern presented his report, he even presented witnesses and expert testimonies, who

pointed out the harmful effects of fat consumption. McGoverns thinking was Americans had to

reduce the fat in their diet before it killed them, and that it didnt matter how they managed to do

it as long as the amount of fat we ate decreased substantially and quickly. This lead into

McGoverns next major goal with the report: increase overall carbohydrate consumption. I

believe science writer and author of Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes, said it best, In retrospect,

its kind of amazing, but this was the thinking at the time. As Americans we had to move away
from a diet, high in animal products like whole milk, cheese, and eggs, to one high in

carbohydrates. Now the carbs that McGovern mentioned in his report were, whole grains and

fruit, but that message was completely overshadowed by the previous one, that fat is bad and

carbs are good. (Aubrey, Allison. "Why We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom." NPR.

NPR, 28 Mar. 2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.)

McGoverns report set off a cascade of new products by food manufacturers. They saw

his low-fat, high-carb mantra as a fantastic opportunity to make a whole lot of money. Many

new products started piling into stores, fat-free yogurt, low-fat milk, low-fat cookies (I know,

how?), low fat muffins, anything that companies found that was popular they simply removed or

reduced the fat content and added, you guessed it, sugar. This flood of fat-free foods finally

reached a crescendo in the 1990s. Foods with little or no fat, were flying off the shelves,

pretzels were good (no fat), whole milk was bad (high fat), eggs were bad, potatoes were good,

but the butter you ate them with was bad. This mania, Gary Taubes argues was very detrimental

to the overall health of the country. When Americans began eating more refined sugar and

grains, is when americans began getting fatter and fatter, and more diabetic. So in McGoverns

attempt to address the rising problem of heart disease, by encouraging a decrease in how much

fat we eat, he instead kickstarted the rise of many other diseases, like diabetes, like obesity. By

looking at studies of people following these low fat diets, you find that there is absolutely no

correlation between a low-fat diet and a decrease in disease. The Womens Health Initiative

Dietary Modification Trial, is one of these studies. It began in 1993 during the massive wave of

anti-fat foods and found results that were contradictory to many peoples beliefs. The women

who participated in this study found no benefit in the low-fat diet compared to women who ate a

normal diet. (Howard, Barbara V., et al. "Low-fat dietary pattern and weight change over 7

years: the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial." Jama 295.1 (2006): 39-49.)
 Now moving into the 2000s, we can clearly see a new trend emerging. As a reaction to

the new research being presented, many people began to rebel against the idea of low fat diets.

Many recent dietary trends explore this idea of eating a mixture of fats and proteins, but with an

extreme reduction of carbs, while also avoiding things like sugar or other sweeteners. One

example of these new diets, is the Keto diet, a diet characterized by excessively low carb intake,

while relying on high amounts of protein and fat for energy. Keto, short for Ketogenic, is a diet

based around reducing carbs, which causes the body to produce ketones in the liver, to use as

an alternative energy source due to the lack of carbs. This kind of low carb diet, relies on the

body's reaction to getting a significantly reduced amount of carbs. Because our bodies are

primarily sugar-driven, a ketogenic diet mimics starvation. This state of starvation is known as

Ketosis, and is characterized by the livers breakdown of fatty acids to produce the glucose

replacement Ketones. This means that the Keto diet is extremely effective, if you plan on losing

weight quickly, but many dieticians and doctors are questioning the health effects of putting your

body into a state of Ketosis. Because of the increase of Ketones in the body and an extreme

decrease in glucose, many people experience harsh side effects of following a Keto diet. One

interesting side effect is something called Keto Breath where your breath becomes sweet

smelling, and supposedly pretty unpleasant, which is caused by excess Ketones leaving your

body through your breath. Another, and much more serious, side effect is weaker bones. One of

Ketones natural job is to pull excess calcium from your bones, but when Ketones are your major

source of energy, the calcium in your bones is significantly diminished making your bones much

more susceptible to fractures. One last side effect of Keto is impaired brain function, which

sounds pretty serious. Because carbs are our optimal way of getting energy, our hungry, energy

consuming brains arent used to relying on Ketones. This means that your brain is getting

suboptimal energy and as a result wont function as well, causing bad memory, headaches, and

even dampening your mood. (Astorino, Dominique. "If You've Been Considering the Keto Diet,

This Will Change Your Mind." RSS. N.p., 01 June 2016. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.)
 American Society has had a very odd relationship with nutrition in the several past

decades, with each section of time seemingly having a different devil of a macro-nutrient. During

the 1980s to 1990s, Americas dietary habits were characterized by an extreme aversion to

everything fatty, while putting carbs upon a golden pedestal as the superb way of getting energy

into our bodies. Well now in the present, even though the effects of fat demonization are still

around us (mostly in the form of yogurt, I swear try finding non-reduced-fat yogurt) most people

have become disillusioned with the demonization of fat and instead have began moving

completely opposite to that notion. By observing diets like Atkins or Keto, its now become

obvious that people have demonized carbs, and placed things like fat and protein on carbs old

golden pedestal. But these diets have their own problems, stemming from the severe lack of

carbs, just as the 1990s diets had problems stemming from the overconsumption of carbs

compared to protein and fat. Overall, I believe Americans have overcomplicated nutrition and

forgotten the one golden rule: you can eat pretty much whatever you want, but do so in

moderation. By depriving yourself of a major macronutrient, like carbs or fat, you deprive your

body of a necessary fuel source. In reality the best course of action should always be to create

a balance between everything you eat, and maintain an air of skepticism when someone comes

to you with a new fad diet.

Bibliography:

Aubrey, Allison. "Why We Got Fatter During The Fat-Free Food Boom." NPR. NPR, 28 Mar.
2014. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

Astorino, Dominique. "If You've Been Considering the Keto Diet, This Will Change Your Mind."
RSS. N.p., 01 June 2016. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

Howard, Barbara V., et al. "Low-fat dietary pattern and weight change over 7 years: the
Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial." Jama 295.1 (2006): 39-49.

Leach, Jeff. "Palm Oil: Maybe Not Such a Good Idea after All - Human Food Project." Human
Food Project RSS. N.p., 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

Taubes, Gary. "Is Sugar Toxic?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 Apr. 2011. Web.
02 Nov. 2016.