.....HARD! Last night I was at a Christmas tea that one of the ladies of my church throws for mothers with elementary school age children. During the course of the evening, the topic of heart health came up as her DH recently had an angiogram which showed he has a mild amount of atherosclerosis (30% blockage in one or two arteries). She and several others were going on about how we have to watch our fat and how evil butter is, etc...the whole low fat dogma thing. The cardiologist told this dear lady's husband that he had to cut the fat out of his diet: eat margarine instead of butter, use fat-free products, eat less meat, etc... and put him on no less than 4 medications, including Lipitor. I really had to control myself to keep quiet and not start an argument right there but I have to admit, I'm very concerned that doctors are still giving this advice to their patients especially when I'm convinced that it will only serve to make things worse, not better. He's not overweight now, but if starts eating all those refined carbs in place of fats, I'd be willing to bet that he will be in a few years.
Maybe I should have said something, but I didn't want to hijack the evening with a dissertation on the evils of sugar and high fructose corn syrup and how it's not the fats (except transfats in those low fat/fat free products) that are killing us, but the high amount of processed carbs and sugars in our diets.
All I did was suggest, quietly when we were alone in the kitchen, that she might want to do a little research on the effect that sugars and high fructose corn syrups, which are often higher in fat free products, have on a person's body and left it at that.