That’s what is so frustrating about the anti-saturated-fat hysteria: we’ve made food so unsatisfying, people end up eating way more of it. Then we blame them for over-eating.

I think you’ve solved the mystery of why French fries in Turkey tasted so much better than anything here. About fifteen years ago when I was there (and not eating low-carb then) meals often came with a garnish of a few French fries (maybe 6-8 fries, not the mountain of them you get in the States), and they were delicious. I bet they were fried in a real, natural fat. Turkey offered the best cuisine I ever had, by the way (and I lived in France for a while). It would be worth living there just for the way the oranges tasted. Even truck stop food was sublime!

I recall the meals in Italy and Spain being exceptional as well when I was on my honeymoon. That was way before “Fat Head,” so I didn’t think about what kind of fats they were using, but I bet I was tasting real food cooked in real fats.

I’m willing to give up foods I used to love — chips, pizza, sourdough bread– to go low-carb, which still allows for a lot of tasty food. But if I had to live on something like the Ornish diet to stay healthy, I think I’d choose to live a shorter life and enjoy it.

We’re currently in the Los Angeles area, where mosquitoes are the second-rarest species, after Republicans. But soon we’re moving to Tennessee, and as I told my wife, we’ll have to re-acquaint ourselves with humidity and mosquitoes. I expected to be treated like a 24-hour diner on my evening walks. Perhaps not.

Speaking of the CSPI, I think most of their energy is directed at abolishing eating pleasure in general. It’s a “puritanical” mission against good tasting food. It’s not just saturated fat that they’re after, but also salt and artificial sweeteners. They can’t have salt in food to make it taste good, and god forbid one can have a sweet treat without any calories. It strikes me much like Taubes describing the obesity epidemic in sinful terms, where obesity is a problem of gluttony and sloth, not of hormone disregulation. For the CSPI, getting pleasure from eating food and not having negative consequences (and as the low-carb diet writers have shown, very likely positive consequences) is heresy (not sure that’s the right word…). The guy from CSPI would probably get along real well with Sylvester Graham or John Harvey Kellogg, who seemed to advocate high-carb vegetarian diets to curb sexual appetite. Seems like another possible reason to stay away from such a diet.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. In “Fat Politics,” Dr. Eric Oliver writes that health issues, especially weight issues, involve a lot of Puritan thinking: being thin and healthy is a sign of virtue, and virtue is a matter of denying yourself bodily pleasures. I remember, after reading CSPI’s long list of sinful foods, saying to my wife, “Gee, it must a real blast to go on a dinner date with one of these people.”

Somebody better warn Spurlock’s wife about the vegetarian diets and sexual appetites. As you’ll recall, in Super Size Me she blamed saturated fat for their diminishing sex life. I guess that explains why hunter-gatherers never produced any children.

I’ve found a few decent restaurants around here. I’ll order a steak, pork chops, salmon, etc., along with a salad and extra vegetables instead of potatoes. But it’s easier to stick to the good stuff at home, and my wife has become quite the steak chef.

Yup. Vegetable oils are lousy for frying. No taste, no good crunch, no satisfying feeling afterwards.

I loved your movie and love the website also. I’m embarassed to admit that I subscribed to the CSPI newsletter for 20 years–a major part of my youth was spent trying to lose weight–eating the skim milk and rice cakes and skinless chicken breasts they recommended–and feeling always hungry & depressed, and never losing the weight! I feel so much better now on low-carb–I was able to stop the antidepressants I took for 20 years, and the weight is slowing coming off (I don’t think it works as quickly for us post-menopausal women as it does for you guys :). Gary Taubes is one of my heros, too–I got to speak to him when he gave a talk at a medical worshop in my area, and I stuttered like a schoolgirl with a crush.

I’m an RN, and I teach diabetes education. I’m constantly at odds with the registered dieticians I work with, who sit down with each patient and cheerily say “let’s go over your diet and make sure you’re getting your carbs in!” I try to impress on the patients how it’s the sugars & starches that raise their blood sugar, and hope they remember that. But you know, if I tried to teach them the real low-carb way, and contradicted all the dieticians (and the doctors who send in their patients), I’d get fired. Gary Taubes is right in trying to change the whole paradigm with the medical professionals–until it changes from the top down, even we believers lower down the ladder can’t do much.

Thanks again for you very entertaining, and very informative, movie and website.

It’s a shame when you have to ignore your doctor’s advice in order to stay healthy. Mine (not the doctor in the film) recommended a lowfat diet because my cholesterol was “elevated” at 203, with an HDL of 61. I of course ignored him.

It breaks my heart to think of all those diabetics out there, getting worse by following the advice they’re given. But congrats for fighting your own little rear-guard action, and for getting off the anti-depressants. Like Mike Eades told me, after the lowfat diet became the rage, a whole lot more people started seeking treatment for depression.

I think the Guy From CSPI takes the prize, since in addition to being wrong, he agitates for legistation and files lawsuits to impose his dietary choices on others.

You can imagine how I feel when someone offers my daughter a cookie and she replies, “No thank you. I don’t need all that sugar.” Or now and then she’ll take the cookie, which is fine too. I don’t want to turn the stuff into forbidden fruit, and she mostly follows our example.