by Dr. Ronald Krauss, a senior scientist and the director of atherosclerosis research at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. Krauss was echoed by another eminent cardiologist and epidemiologist, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-directs the program in cardiovascular epidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Both of these doctors have been involved in numerous studies measuring the effects of dietary habits on cardiovascular health and disease. They and many of their colleagues have found little evidence that low-fat diets are any better for health than moderate or high-fat diets.
"No randomized trial looking at weight change has shown that people did better on a low-fat diet," Mozaffarian told us, and there have been dozens of them. "For many people, low-fat diets are even worse than moderate or high-fat diets because they're often high in carbohydrates from rapidly digested foods such as white flour, white rice, potatoes, refined snacks and sugary drinks." They are also often dangerously high in sodium, as salt is often added to processed foods (along with sugar and starch) to compensate for the lack of flavor from fats.
"The only time I use the term 'low-fat' is when I'm telling people not to use the term 'low-fat,' " Krauss proclaimed. "The term should be banned from our vocabulary, along with 'fatty.' " In stigmatizing the concept of fat, we are giving many healthy foods a bad reputation, foods like avocados, nuts, plant oils (olive, canola, soybean, walnut and other nut oils) and many types of fish.