For decades, the USDA food pyramid has been telling us to eat less fat. When they launched their campaign, only 14% of Americans were obese. Today, that number’s at more than 30%, with another 30% of the population being classified as “overweight.”
So what’s wrong? Did the public fail to get the message? Are we all secretly pigging out on high fat foods? Did we all suddenly turn sedentary?
By the late 1990s, more than 90% of American consumers reported eating low-fat products, and roughly two-thirds of us believed “a need exists for food ingredients that can replace the fat in food products.” By all appearances, we embraced the low-fat message with open arms. Yet we still gained weight.