NY Times: The Fat Pack Wonders if the Party’s Over

Funny coincidence — the food of the month in my newsletter is fats and oils. It’s going out tomorrow, and today, on the front page of the NYTimes Dining Section was The Fat Pack Wonders if the Party’s Over.

This article was interesting. I suspect a little hidden glee among the fat-phobic that the day of reckoning has arrived for those who have been happily feasting on pork butt and other fatty delights. But there’s also some healthy skepticism on the ever-changing nutritional advice (although, unfortunately, the skepticism seems to be used to justify a “anything goes” approach to diet, despite physical and personal evidence to the contrary). There’s also a lesson on weight-loss here.

Here are my thoughts:

1) “Fat is bad” and “Fat is good” are both overly simplistic statements. We all need fat in our diet. We should be more concerned with what kinds of fat we should be eating.

2) While it’s tempting to use the latest nutritional information to justify our over-consumption of anything – I’ll confess, every time I read the latest industry-sponsored research on coffee, I think about getting an espresso – at the end of the day you need to pay attention to your body. For the men in the article, the weight that they were gaining was a warning sign that something was wrong.

3) If you decide to lose weight, it is possible to do it and still LOVE what you eat. Just see those stories of the restaurateurs and foodies in the article.