Eat It

Put down that cheeseburger. Avert your covetous eyes from that chicken-fried steak. If you don’t, the heart-attack monster will get you.

Not so much, according to a new book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories," discussed in today’s New York Times:

Ancel Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago . . . became convinced in the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of heart disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors.

There were two glaring problems with this theory . . . . First, it wasn’t clear that traditional diets were especially lean. Nineteenth-century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the percentage of fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according to the best estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in the modern Western diet.

Second, there wasn’t really a new epidemic of heart disease. Yes, more cases were being reported, but not because people were in worse health. It was mainly because they were living longer and were more likely to see a doctor who diagnosed the symptoms.