Читать книгу Low-Carb Diet For Dummies - Katherine B. Chauncey - Страница 31

Americans are heavier than ever before, despite the fact that they’re reducing the percentage of calories consumed from fat. Popular diet books and the media immediately targeted carbohydrates as the bad guys and labeled them fattening. What was ignored is the fact that the average American consumes 40,000 calories more (over the course of a year) than they did previously. The real message should be that excess calories from any source will result in increased body weight. High-carbohydrate diets recommend that the carbohydrate comes from fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, and dairy, but high-carb diets also impose a tight restriction on fat, which leads to a higher consumption of fat-free and reduced-fat snack foods.

One thing the advocates of the low-fat diet didn’t plan on was the abundance of fat-free foods that would become available. The low-fat message became distorted into counting fat grams. Therefore, fat-free foods just became free foods in people’s minds. The fat in sweet rolls, cookies, cake, and crackers was replaced with sugar or other refined sweeteners. Intake of fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains, the preferred replacement for fat, increased some, but it still fell short of the recommended goals.