Low-fat capitalism.

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Position: Flip Side

It's not only the collapse of the stock market that has the upper classes biting their fingernails. In the last couple of weeks, the low-fat, high-carb way of life that was central to the self-esteem of the affluent has been all but discredited. If avarice was the principal vice of the bourgeoisie, a commitment to low fat was its one great counter-balancing virtue. You can bet, for example, that those CEOs who cooked the books and ransacked their companies' assets did not start the day with two eggs over easy, a rasher of bacon, and side of hash browns. No, those crimes were likely fueled by unbuttered low-fat muffins and delicate slices of melon. Grease was for proles.

But as we learned in the cover story of the July 7 New York Times Magazine, there never was much to support the dogma that the low-fat approach will make you slim and resistant to heart disease. In fact, the American epidemic of obesity coincides precisely with the arrival of the anti-fat dogma in the '80s, accompanied by a cornucopia of low-fat cookies, cakes, potato chips, and frozen pot roast dinners. Millions of Americans began to pig out on "guilt-free" feasts of ungarnished carbs--with perverse and often debilitating results, especially among those unable to afford health club memberships and long hours on the elliptical trainer.

I have confirmed these findings with my own scientific study, which draws on a sample of exactly two: myself and Jane Brody, the New York Times health columnist and tireless opponent of all foodstuffs other than veggies and starch. It was Brody, more than anyone, who promoted the low-fat way of life to the masses, producing columns, from the '80s on, with headlines like "Our excessive protein intake can hurt liver, kidneys, bone," "Carbohydrates can help you lose weight," and" `Chemicals' in food less harmful than fat."

As she revealed in a 1999 column, Brody was herself raised on a high-carb, low-fat diet of "shredded wheat, oatmeal, challah, Jewish rye, and bagels," the latter presumably unblemished by the customary shmear of cream cheese. I, meanwhile, was raised on a diet that might strain even an Inuit's gall bladder. We ate eggs every morning with bacon or sausage, meat for lunch, and meat again for dinner, invariably accompanied by gravy or at least pan drippings. We buttered everything from broccoli to brownies, and would have buttered butter itself if it were not for the problems of traction presented by the butter-butter interface.

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