Fat Fiction

How did science get it so wrong? As long as I can remember, I was told that I needed to count my calories, eat less fat, work out regularly, and then I’d lose weight. I was also told that high-fat foods, along with cholesterol, were the cause of heart disease and would kill me, but it’s all wrong! Jennifer Isenhart’s documentary Fat Fiction goes in-depth into the myth of the dangers of fat in our foods.

Let me start with one of the film’s opening clips from HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher shows a picture of the crowd at Cape Canaveral for the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. He raised the question about how can it be that the hundreds of people attending the launch were not fat. It’s a fair question. For decades, we followed the fat-free diet (or struggling to) only to see obesity and rates of diabetes skyrocket since we embraced that plan.

“For decades, we followed the fat-free diet (or struggling to) only to see obesity and rates of diabetes skyrocket…”

Fat Fiction is hosted by Dr. Mark Hyman, a well-known TV physician, and best-selling author. He takes us on a history of America’s obsession with fat-free foods and carbo-loading. He lays out a convincing argument about what we thought was saving our lives has, in actuality, been killing us over the decades.

Like any excellent science documentary, we need an experiment. The film takes three average Americans and monitors their blood sugar and weight as well as personal testimony about energy and alertness. For one week, the participants would eat a low-carb diet and the other a low-fat diet. The test is simple and straightforward. Guess who won.