For years the USDA and the FDA have told Americans that eating a low fat, high carb diet was healthy and would help with weight loss. This recommendation encouraged people to start picking up all the carbs they could as long as they were low fat. On top of that people started moving less and less, this led to the climb of diabetes and obesity.
Last year the government even went so far as to tell the CEO of Kind Bars that they could no longer label their product as healthy due to the high fat content, even though the high fat content was due to nuts, which are a healthy food. Finally the USDA recognized that their recommendation of a high carb, low fat diet may not actually have been the best idea for health.
In 2014 a little under 22 million people were diagnosed with diabetes, 8.1 million are undiagnosed every year and every year there are 1.4 million new individuals diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a disease that is preventable yet the number of people being diagnosed and dying from it keeps climbing every year.
Part of the problem is the recommendation of low fat high carb from USDA. When someone is over consuming carbs and not utilizing them through physical activity that is when glucose intolerance starts to occur. Another thing that happens with over consumption of carbs, particularly processed, is they start to go through the same process as saturated fats and begin to increase saturated fat levels in your body which can lead to more health issues. I admit that USDA is not all to blame and they are now trying to correct their statement that fats should stay low.
I am happy to hear that not only has USDA started to retract their statement about Kind Bars, but also they have announced that a low fat high carb diet is not the healthiest and healthy fats should be a part of everyone’s diet. Fats have always gotten a bad rap, but healthy fats really should be incorporated into a diet for cardiovascular health, mental health, hormone regulation, and helping with the absorption of certain vitamins.
This new recommendation does come with the good old saying of everything in moderation though. I would not recommend going over board on fat because fat does have more calories (whether it is healthy or not) and if you are trying to lose weight you still need to be expending more calories then you are taking in and eating a lot of fats that are calorie dense could hinder this weight loss, but people should no longer be afraid of fat or Kind Bars because they are delicious and nutritious!
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/
http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/prev/national/figpersons.htm