Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Everyone says the low-fat diet failed.
According to the USDA’s own food availability data and the CDC’s own dietary surveys, America never ate one.
Yes, fat fell as a percentage of calories. But the actual grams of fat went up, because total calories went up faster — about 500 more per day. Most of that increase came from vegetable oil and refined flour, embedded in processed and restaurant food.
Salad and cooking oils alone went from about 115 calories a day in 1970 to over 400 by 2010. More than triple.
Meanwhile vegetables fell. Beans never happened. Whole grains lost to refined ones.
That’s not a country that followed the advice imperfectly. That’s a country that went the other way on nearly every line item — and then called it a low-fat diet, because that’s what it said on the box.
The new video walks through it chart by chart.
(Thanks to Jeff Novick, the longtime dietitian with the McDougall and Pritikin programs, whose lectures on this history sent me back to the original data.)
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O U R W E B S I T E
vegsource.com
Everyone says the low-fat diet failed.
According to the USDA’s own food availability data and the CDC’s own dietary surveys, America never ate one.
Yes, fat fell as a percentage of calories. But the actual grams of fat went up, because total calories went up faster — about 500 more per day. Most of that increase came from vegetable oil and refined flour, embedded in processed and restaurant food.
Salad and cooking oils alone went from about 115 calories a day in 1970 to over 400 by 2010. More than triple.
Meanwhile vegetables fell. Beans never happened. Whole grains lost to refined ones.
That’s not a country that followed the advice imperfectly. That’s a country that went the other way on nearly every line item — and then called it a low-fat diet, because that’s what it said on the box.
The new video walks through it chart by chart.
(Thanks to Jeff Novick, the longtime dietitian with the McDougall and Pritikin programs, whose lectures on this history sent me back to the original data.)
Subscribe to my Substack (to receive email when I upload):
vegsource.substack.com
O U R W E B S I T E
vegsource.com
