Insanity at the USDA

Fat Head: USDA Report: We Eat Less Fat, But Fat Is Killing Us

A new report from the USDA says Americans are eating less fat than we did 30 years ago. Here’s the opening from an online article about the report:

On average, Americans are eating 10g less fat per day today than they were in the late 1970s, according to new research. In a report comparing food consumption patterns in 1977-78 versus 2005-2008, Biing-Hwan Lin and Joanne Guthrie from USDA’s Economic Research Service found that on average, Americans consumed 75.2g of fat in 2005-08 compared with 85.6g in 1977-78.

Meanwhile, the percentage of total calories derived from fat also declined substantially from 39.7% to 33.4% between 1977 and 2008, said the authors.

Hallelujah! Now that USDA itself is admitting we’re eating less fat, surely they’ll finally also admit that the rise we’ve seen in obesity and metabolic syndrome in the past 30 years can’t be blamed on fat. I can just hear the press conference where they announce they’re allowing whole milk back in schools …

However, with more Americans eating out than ever before, a growing proportion of the fat that they do consume is the unhealthy, saturated, variety, said the authors, noting that almost a third (31.6%) of calories were from foods consumed outside the home in 2005-8 compared with just 17.7% in the late 1970s.

“Food consumed away from home is higher in saturated fat than foods consumed at home [in the 2005-8 data set]. The higher percent of calories from saturated fat in fast-foods was especially noteworthy at 13.5%, compared with 11.9% in restaurant foods, 12.3% in school foods, and 10.7% in foods consumed at home.”

Similarly, foods consumed away from home in 2005-8 contained significantly more sodium (1,820mg of sodium per 1,000 calories), than foods consumed at home (1,369mg sodium per 1,000 calories); with foods from restaurants and fast-food outlets particularly sodium-dense at 2,151mg and 1,864mg of sodium per 1,000 calories, respectively.

Head. Bang. On. Desk.

Faced with their own evidence that fat didn’t commit the crime, the USDA researchers nonetheless rounded up the usual suspects: Saturated Fat and his evil sidekick Sodium.

Go read it all.