It was a nice simplistic message. The kind that makes for easy sound bites. Fat makes you fat. Fat packs more calories than carbs. Studies "proved" that fat caused heart diseases. Corporations capitalized on that and suddenly there were low-fat products everywhere.

Now after 25 years of low-fat dogma and USDA food Pyramid, the idea that fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and that carbs aren't all they were cracked up to be has become counter-intuitive. We collectively need to be de-programmed.

Yet, all those years ago, it was well understood that potatoes and bread made you fat. I still have an old Weight Watcher book, back when they used equivalents, which restricted your carbs to 2 equivalents per day. That meant no more than 2 slices of bread or starchy vegetables per day.

Had the low-carb "craze" started then, people would have embraced it as making sense. It's only years of conditioning that made low-carb counterintuitive