Low-Fat Diets: Who Are We Kidding?

If you have no problem living on lentils, turnips and broccoli, please go away.

The rest of you, check the label on that bag of York Peppermint Patties in the pantry. "This is a fat-free food," it says.

How dumb do they think we are?

Your body needs fat. If it doesn't get fat, it goes way overboard on sugar, which it then converts to fat. Processing all that sugar puts a strain on the pancreas, which eventually goes on strike. Now you've got adult onset diabetes.

Fun, fun, fun.

But let's be fair. When your doctor says, "eat a low-fat diet," what she really means is, "Stop deep-frying every damn thing you put in your mouth." There, she has a point.

Not all fats are created equal. Take margarine: please. Margarine is garbage. Margarine is made of wonky molecules that catch on the insides of your arteries and stick there. Your body doesn't know what to do with margarine, so it just stuffs it in any old corner and tries to forget about it. If your doctor tells you to eat margarine, get another doctor.

Olive oil is the opposite of margarine, particularly the extra-virgin kind. Olive oil scours the evil margarine molecules from your arteries and flushes them. A dollop of olive oil makes most recipes better.

I'm a big fan of unsalted butter, though it's not very PC of me to say this. When I make cookies, pie crusts, and biscuits, I use 100% butter in place of that most sinister of substances, Crisco. Crisco is plastic fat. Life is too short.

The fat that kills you is the stuff you don't even taste. It's put there by the mongo food industry as a substitute for flavor.

So if you want one simple rule about fat, let it be this: Eat Real Food. Know what kind of fat you're eating, and enjoy it.