Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Advance Access published online on February 23, 2008
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrn001
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How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America
Correspondence: * Ann F. La Berge, Department of Science and Technology in Society, Lane Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060. Email: alaberge{at}vt.edu
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Abstract |
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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.
Key Words: low-fat diet • diet-heart hypothesis • obesity • fat and fats • cholesterol • popular health • cardiovascular disease • weight loss
I presented an earlier version of this article at the annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine in Madison, Wisconsin in May 2004. A Virginia Tech Humanities Summer Stipend (2005) funded additional research. Many people provided help and encouragement: Sincere thanks to Micaela Sullivan-Fowler at the Ebling Health Sciences Library at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for her gracious research assistance and to my daughter, Louisa La Berge, who helped with data collection in Madison. Thanks to the librarians of Emory and Henry College for allowing me access to their collection of Prevention magazines. Virginia Tech STS graduate students Chris Hays and Tristan Cloyd helped with research, and STS postdoctoral student Piyush Mathur provided editorial assistance. Colleagues Chris Sellers, Gerald Oppenheimer, and Steven Shapin generously shared their work with me. Special thanks to Gerald Oppenheimer, Rima Apple, Jacqueline Wehmueller, Doreen Valentine, Leigh Claire La Berge, STS graduate students Jill Chapman, Susan d'Amelio, and SoYeon Park, Virginia Tech colleagues Bernice Hausman, Kelly Belanger, Kathy Jones, and Mitzi Vernon, and two anonymous reviewers, all of whom made helpful suggestions that I have tried to incorporate.