Food Rules #9

#9 Avoid food products with the wordoid "lite" or the terms "low-fat" or "nonfat" in their names.

The forty-year-old campaign to create low and nonfat versions of traditionals foods has been a failure: We've gotten fat on low fat products. Why? Because removing the fat from foods doesn't necessarily make them nonfattening. Carbohydrates can also make you fat, and many low- and nonfat foods boost the sugars to make up for the loss of flavor. Also, by demonizing one nutrient *fat* we inevitably give a free pass to another, supposedly "good," nutrient *carbohydrates* and then proceed to eat too much of that instead. Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970s, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories a day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar. The result: The average male is seventeen pounds heavier and the average female nineteen pounds heavier than in the late 1970s. You're better of eating the real thing in moderation than binging on "lite" food products packed with sugars and salt. -Michael Pollan, Food Rules