Move over, Gordon Gekko! I have something even more shocking to say than your 1980s-era manifesto from the movie “Wall Street,” that “Greed…is good.”
What is my news bulletin? Simply this: “Fat is good!”
It is time to jettison every scrap of health news you thought you knew, and start over.
“Well, that ought to be easy for you, Judy” said the Angel who lives on my right shoulder. “You’ve never listened to me, anyway.” She gets cranky, from being ignored a lot.
“It’s not that we don’t listen,” my little left-shoulder Devil replied. “It’s just that you’re impossible to follow! You contradict yourself!”
“Like when?” pouted Angel.
“When have you not?” said Devil. He imitated Angel’s voice: “You need to eat lots of protein, and stay away from carbohydrates.”
“Well?” said Angel. “That’s what they told us, in health class.”
“But then you said proteins were bad, they had too much fat, and we should eat this new stuff called ‘transfats’ instead.”
“Except transfats turned out to be terrible,” I took up the argument. “You said, ‘Omigosh, get them out of the house, they’re worse for you than a stick of butter.’”
“I just quote the research; I don’t invent it,” said Angel, huffily. “I do my best to keep you informed.”
“And remember fiber?” asked Devil. “That was going to solve everything!”
“Until I tried it,” I exclaimed. “All that happened was I felt stuffed, and bloated…but still ravenous!”
“That wasn’t my fault,” said Angel. “It’s what they told us!”
“Then there’s the whole question of Fish,” said my Devil.
“What about it? It’s good for you!” said Angel.
“Yeah — except for all the mercury they found in it.”
“Well, that’s why they said just take Vitamin E.”
“Except then it turned out that Vitamin E helps nothing and might even make some things worse!”
“I don’t see why you’re making this so personal,” said Angel, sadly.
“It’s just that it’s hard to know which pieces of advice to actually take, sweetie,” I tried to explain. “And it’s only going to get worse, you know— because it is beginning to look like everything we thought we knew about fat, and obesity, is wrong.”
“What do you mean?” asked Angel. She sounded nervous.
I couldn’t blame her. For as long as I can remember, being overweight was considered not just unfashionable, but an early death sentence. Whether from diabetes, or heart disease, or being left out of Taylor Swift music videos, if you weren’t skinny, you were doomed.
“You know how being overweight is supposed to be bad?”
“Everybody knows that,” Angel snapped.
“Well, everybody was wrong! It turns out that the healthiest option of all was something no one suspected: Being fat!”
“How do you figure that?”
“In 2012, a study by the National Cancer Institute found that moderately obese people actually live about 3.1 years longer than normal-weight men and women.”
“One study proves nothing,” said Angel.
“And in January of 2013, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a huge literature review which concluded that being overweight was actually associated with a lower risk of death.”
“Nonsense,” huffed Angel. “Everybody dies.”
“Gotta agree with that,” said Devil.
“Smartasses, both of you. It was 6% less, within the time studied. ”
“Hmm. Statistically significant,” said Angel, reluctantly.
“But here’s the real shocker,” I continued. “ “This past April , a study of nearly two million people in Great Britain found that underweight adults had a 34 % greater chance of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other dementia than people of normal weight. Thirty-four percent! And people’s odds of dementia went down as their weight went up, until the risks were almost a third less for the very obese.”
“Shut up!” exclaimed Angel.
“Holy Moly!” said Devil. “You’d have to be crazy to stay skinny against odds like that!”
“So who wants ice cream?” I asked.
“We do!” they both screamed.
There was quiet for several minutes while we helped ourselves.
The spoon had just clattered in the empty bowl when Devil spoke up again. “Just one thing,” he said. “Maybe they’ll have to change the name of this column — to ‘A Look On The Heavier Side.”
“Very funny, Devil,” I said. “But I think we’ll save that for your next fashion show, instead.”
