I agree its a good read, but not that its not anti fat, which it still is IMHO. We still have the calories in, calories out theory being promoted as if all calories no matter what the source, are supposedly treated equally by the body, which clearly they are not.

I also spent some time in France recently, and this business about the French only eating small meals seems to be based on the nouvelle cuisine phenomenon which was passe about 20 years ago - and even then would not have affected anyone who didn't eat in expensive restaurants. These days serving sizes are the same as anywhere else in Europe (or here) and there are considerably more McDonalds in France than England or Italy (or Australia).

The anthropologist Richard Wrangham, is also quoted saying that paleolithic man needed to control fire, and therefore cooking to advance because that enabled food to be made softer. His theory goes like this;

"People who think that meat dominated the diet of early Homo may well be right," he says, "but they would have to have spent five hours a day just chewing. Raw meat is very hard to chew, and presumably raw wild meat is even harder."

- sort of begs the question that our ancestors may well have evolved on a diet of the fattiest, softest bits of raw meat, in part because they wouldn't take five hours to chew, and also because they were the richest source of energy available. The control of fire is thought by most anthropologists, to be a much later development.

The really frustrating thing about an article like that, is that all the information is there, but people like Willett see only part of the picture when all that is required is to connect the remaining dots.

Cheers,

Malcolm