Eating Fat Makes You Fat Case Study

An 18 year-old walks into a grocery store, ready to buy his new groceries for his new university apartment. He has a limited budget and knows that a man his age needs a large amount of food since he will be up for the next 32 hours studying and going to parties with new friends. First this man goes down the drink aisle. He picks up 2 gallons of skim milk since he was taught in high school that fat makes you fat, and also picks up a pack of Coke for himself and a single Diet Coke for his new lady interest he saw in the library drinking a Diet Coke. Then he continues down the breakfast aisle and gets eggs, and considers getting bacon but doesn’t since he was taught that fat makes you fat. Knowing that whole wheat is good for the body, he goes down the bread aisle and picks up 2 loaves of whole wheat bread, and 1 package of pasta. He needs something to put on the bread, so he continues to get margarine instead of butter since he was taught that fat makes you fat and your body needs carbs more than anything.

He is blind to the fact that over half of the people in that store were overweight if not obese and they are buying almost the same things he is buying. He is blind to the fact that in the past 40 years since the notion of “eating fat makes you fat” became popular, obesity has risen over 30% in adults. He is blind to the fact that child obesity has only recently been accepted as normal. He is blind to the fact that in his history classes learning about World War II and the Vietnam War, not one woman, child or man was overweight in any of the pictures showing the lifestyle of the day. But somehow, nutritionists say our ancestors were unhealthy because they ate one thing that was suppose to make them fat....fat. And yet the number one cause of death in America is no longer smoking, but being too fat and