101 Fries, Thighs & Lies: Why you might want to read this

While I have not , as yet, read the book, what is said in her write-up, regards fats, is right on target.
..................................................................

Nutritionist attacks the food pyramid as an outdated monument to marketing.
BY Nancy Maes
Special to the Tribune
( Q - section 13 - Sunday March 25,2007 )
Deborah Arneson had a rude awakening when she started counseling people on how to lose weight based on everything she had been taught about the food pyramid and realizedthey were gaining weight instead. The licensed clinical nutritionistchronicles her experience in
demystifying the misinformation about diets and details a more effective way to slim down in her book :'
Fries, Thighs, and Lies" ( ISBN 1591201942 at Amazon )
(Basic Health Publications,$14.95).
Arneson discovered the major flaw in her early advice when she toured the headquarters of the American Dietetic Association, which was asked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to turn the four food groups into a well-balanced diet. The result was the 1992 food pyramid and then the 2005 MyPyramid."The ADA has a wall that is about 30 feet long and about 6 feet high that lists all the food vendors that support the association," Arneson recalled. "There can't be much truth in information when all these people are feeding the coffers of the ADA."She concluded that "the pyramid is not a safe place to find information for a diet. lf you eat the food-pyramid way, you will eventually look like a pyramid and be small on the top and large on the bottom with thunder thighs."So what's a self-respecting nutritionist to do? Arneson found the answer on a trip to a village in India. "I saw women in their 60s, 70s and80s who looked 20 to 30 years younger. Their cheeks were full, their eyes were shining bright, their hair was hardly gray and they were very limber," she recalled. She discovered they were simmering fish, lamb and chicken in sesame and coconut oil and eating avocados off the trees."They were eating a lot of fat, and the women were all lean, so when I got back to Chicago, instead of recommending 30 to 35 percent healthy fat a day, I recommended 50 percent, and the fat on my patients started melting away."Arneson's book includes the three pyramids for proteins, fats and carbohydrates divided into the good, the bad and the ugly that she developed. The "good" are reflected in the foods Arneson may eat on a typical day: a protein drink that includes a tablespoon of coconut oil and a tablespoon of Healthy Balance oil for breakfast; hummus and rice crackers for a mid-morning snack; lemon Parmesan organic chicken and teriyaki broccoli for lunch; a sliver of goat cheese and grapes in midafternoon; homemade chicken sausage with peas and green beans for dinner; half an avocado before bedtime; and plenty of water, which is not in the pyramid. But Arneson admits that when the waterpipes broke at her office, her pipes froze at home and she had a medical emergency in her family she went to McDonald's and had a small chocolate milkshake and fries. In self-defense she said, "There are not four food groups, there are two food groups. There are physical health foods to stay lean, but some-times you need mental-health foods to make you feel good."