Letters | 17 October 2013

A fat lot of good

Sir: Max Pemberton is right that obesity is a terrible problem in western society (‘The battle of the bulge’, 12 October). But it is not helped by doctors. He seems to think that eating fat makes you fat: ‘While people back then were slimmer, they ate fattier foods.’ He then appears surprised that despite ‘eating better now’ and having access to more gyms and ‘working out more’ (which is arguable), we are not as slim as our predecessors. The plague of obesity seems to have started about 40 years ago, when scientists, funded by margarine manufacturers, came up with the brilliant wheeze that eating animal fat makes you fat and causes heart attacks. Many of the foods that had up to then sustained our ancestors and kept them slim were anathematised. Thus began the modern obsession with fat-free or low-fat foods, laced with sugar. These are disastrous on the metabolism when coupled with those other staples of the modern diet: convenience foods made with cheap denatured grain and potatoes.