IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB000774475

How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America (2008)

La Berge, Ann Fowler (Author)

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Volume: 63
Pages: 139--177

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Weight management Nutrition; dietetics Obesity Public health Fats; oils; lipids 20th century, late United States

This article examines how faith in science led physicians and patients to embrace the low-fat diet for heart disease prevention and weight loss. Scientific studies dating from the late 1940s showed a correlation between high-fat diets and high-cholesterol levels, suggesting that a low-fat diet might prevent heart disease in high-risk patients. By the 1960s, the low-fat diet began to be touted not just for high-risk heart patients, but as good for the whole nation. After 1980, the low-fat approach became an overarching ideology, promoted by physicians, the federal government, the food industry, and the popular health media. Many Americans subscribed to the ideology of low fat, even though there was no clear evidence that it prevented heart disease or promoted weight loss. Ironically, in the same decades that the low-fat approach assumed ideological status, Americans in the aggregate were getting fatter, leading to what many called an obesity epidemic. Nevertheless, the low-fat ideology had such a hold on Americans that skeptics were dismissed. Only recently has evidence of a paradigm shift begun to surface, first with the challenge of the low-carbohydrate diet and then, with a more moderate approach, reflecting recent scientific knowledge about fats.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000774475/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Christopher E. Forth; (2019)
Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (/isis/citation/CBB439415836/)

Article Parr, Jessica M.; (2014)
Obesity and the Emergence of Mutual Aid Groups for Weight Loss in the Post-War United States (/isis/citation/CBB001550974/)

Article Nicolas Rasmussen; (2018)
Group Weight Loss and Multiple Screening: A Tale of Two Heart Disease Programs in Postwar American Public Health (/isis/citation/CBB293285264/)

Article Park, Roberta J.; (2011)
Historical Reflections on Diet, Exercise, and Obesity: The Recurring Need to “Put Words into Action” (/isis/citation/CBB001250799/)

Thesis Levine, Deborah I.; (2008)
Managing American Bodies: Diet, Nutrition, and Obesity in America, 1840--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001561378/)

Book Nicolas Rasmussen; (2019)
Fat in the Fifties (/isis/citation/CBB964187680/)

Article Stolberg, Michael; (2012)
“Abhorreas Pinguedinem”: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medicine (c. 1500--1750) (/isis/citation/CBB001221620/)

Book Karen Throsby; (2023)
Sugar rush: Science, politics and the demonisation of fatness (/isis/citation/CBB539001735/)

Article Knigh, Christine; (2011)
“Most People Are Simply Not Designed to Eat Pasta”: Evolutionary Explanations for Obesity in the Low-Carbohydrate Diet Movement (/isis/citation/CBB001250091/)

Article Nicolas Rasmussen; (2019)
Downsizing obesity: On Ancel Keys, the origins of BMI, and the neglect of excess weight as a health hazard in the United States from the 1950s to 1970s (/isis/citation/CBB762466362/)

Book Sabrina Strings; (2019)
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (/isis/citation/CBB280233988/)

Thesis Nan Zhou; (2015)
Understanding Parenting and Young Chinese Children's Risk for Obesity in the U.S. (/isis/citation/CBB010023303/)

Article Offer, Avner; (2001)
Body Weight and Self-Control in the United States and Britain since the 1950s (/isis/citation/CBB000770462/)

Book Segrave, Kerry; (2008)
Obesity in America, 1850--1939: A History of Social Attitudes and Treatment (/isis/citation/CBB000951770/)

Book Biltekoff, Charlotte; (2013)
Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health (/isis/citation/CBB001452069/)

Article Jessica Parr; (2019)
“Act thin, stay thin”: Commercialization, behavior modification, and group weight control (/isis/citation/CBB684404261/)

Book Foxcroft, Louise; (2012)
Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years (/isis/citation/CBB001200874/)

Article Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle; (2012)
Enflures et boursouflures. L'obésité au Moyen Âge (/isis/citation/CBB001420812/)

Book Wendy Mitchinson; (2018)
Fighting Fat: Canada, 1920-1980 (/isis/citation/CBB163094871/)

Article Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina; (2005)
The Culture of the Abdomen: Obesity and Reducing in Britain, circa 1900-1939 (/isis/citation/CBB000660023/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}