It didn’t take me long to roll my eyes when I saw this headline: Tasty Low Calorie Foods: Fat Hidden In Fiber May Let You Taste, But Not Digest, Rich Flavors.

“Our goal is to keep the fat in the food, but stop it from being digested by surrounding it with layers of dietary fiber,” says Julian McClements, UMass Amherst professor of food science. “Foods produced with these encapsulated fats should have the same qualities as conventional high-fat foods.”

I can only shake my head. Notice first that the headline has managed to work in two “good” things - “low calorie” and “low fat” - equating the two rather well. I’m sure I don’t have to make mention that eating low fat foods doesn’t always mean something is healthful, but I will anyway. Is a low fat Twinkie a good thing to eat? Take a look at the tantalizing picture in the article. Does that look like something you should be eating, low fat or not? The problem with the low fat nonsense is that people have equated “fat” with “bad” and figure if it doesn’t have fat, it must not be bad. Of course, anyone following a natural diet understands that low fat foods are as undesirable as so many low carb foods that appeared a half-decade ago. Real health will never come in a package.

And now, here is a list of foods that are both low calorie and low fat, yet are completely natural, untampered foods: lettuce, spinach, tomato, cucumber, carrots, radishes, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, blueberries, strawberries…the list goes on if you’d like me to continue. Do you notice what these foods are? They’re all produce items, likely found in the produce section of your grocery. They are real foods, not man-made food products. They are full of the vitamins and minerals that your body craves, something the “enriched and fortified” garbage that comes in a colorful box is not.

It boils down to avoiding stuff that comes from a factory and eating stuff that comes from nature. Meat is real food. Produce is real food. Nuts are real food. Low-fat granola is not real food.

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Tags: fake food, fiber, low fat, Nutritionism