Read more
Informationen zum Autor Fran McCullough is the author of the bestselling The Low-Carb Cookbook and Living Low-Carb . She won a James Beard Award for Great Food Without Fuss and, since 1999, has been the editor of the annual Best American Recipes anthology series. A graduate of Stanford University, McCullough began her career as an editor, discovering Sylvia Plath, Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, and National Book Award winner Robert Bly as well as Richard Ford. She also edited and published a distinguished list of cookbook authors, including Diana Kennedy, Paula Wolfert, and Deborah Madison. Her website address is www.blackdirt.net/lowcarb Klappentext In this innovative cookbook, the James Beard Award-winning author debunks the unhealthy low-fat diet myth, celebrating the vital health properties--and weight-loss and anti-aging benefits--of such former "no-no's" as eggs, red meats, and even butter, coconut, and chocolate. Includes 100 healthy and simple recipes. Chapter One: The Truth About Fats What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good? -- Phil Handler, President of the National Academy of Sciences, testifying about the low-fat dietary guidelines before Congress in 1980 To begin, let's consider some basic nutritionally correct "facts," the ones we know so well we could repeat them in our sleep: ? Fat makes you fat. ? A big juicy steak is like a heart attack on a plate. ? Canola oil is the healthiest cooking oil. ? Coconut is a deadly fat that promotes heart disease. ? Eat less fat, and you'll live longer. ? Bacon and eggs is an artery-clogging, killer breakfast. ? The most important thing you can do for your health is to keep your cholesterol level as low as possible. Actually, none of these widely accepted "truths" is true. Not only are they false, but making food choices based on them will lead to some dire health consequences, despite what the U.S. government prescribes. In fact, almost everything you think you know about fat isn't true, unless you're an especially astute reader of cutting-edge science on the subject. Or unless you happened to read Gary Taubes's New York Times Magazine cover story on fat that questioned the conventional wisdom on the subject (July 7, 2002). What most of us have believed to be true -- and that includes doctors and other health professionals -- about fats and health is actually the result of a complex synergy of food industry lobbying, medical celebrity self-promotion, governmental intervention based on no sound science, advertising, a hyperactive health police with media visibility, and our own eager Puritanical desires to deprive ourselves in order to purge our sins of excess and earn the salvation of a healthy old age. Now that we've had thirty years of margarine, fat-free milk, cheese-free cheese, inedible lean pork, Egg Beaters, dreadful dry chicken breasts, SnackWell's, and approximately fifteen thousand other new low-fat products (high-ticket items that are actually cheaper to produce than "real food" and have a longer shelf life), we should be much healthier. The president of the American Heart Association predicted in 1984 that if everyone ate low-fat, we'd eradicate atherosclerosis, the clogged-artery disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes, by the year 2000. Actually, we were moderately compliant; we did reduce our fat consumption from more than 40 percent of our total diet to 34 percent. Yet only the food industry has gotten healthier. The incidence of heart disease has not declined, and obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed. We jettisoned our beloved eggs, bacon, cream, cheese, and red meat, and yet we haven't thrived. That's partly because, as we now know, or some of us ...