The 10 Craziest Health Trends of the Past 40 Years
A lot of great things have happened to our health since the 1970s (Running for fun! Plant-based diets! Personalized medicine!), but these 10 fads deserve to be left in the past.
By Emma Haak
Illustration: David Wyffels
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Fat-Free Everything
The Idea: Low-fat and fat-free foods ruled the day in the late '80s and early '90s. Food manufacturers removed fat from seemingly every product they could think of and we all feasted on carbs without a care in the world (they were the base of the
Food Pyramid at that time, after all).
The Problem: In order to remove fat
without removing all of the flavor, brands added sugar—and a lot of it. Even healthy fats were demonized, grouped with less-healthy version at the very top of the Food Pyramid. "I would eat a 5-pound bag of Halloween candy because it was fat-free, but I wouldn't touch an avocado," admits Scritchfield. But ditching fat didn't do too much for our health. A large study in
JAMA found that following a low-fat diet didn't lower the risk of coronary heart disease or stroke in postmenopausal women.
The Lesson: A healthy diet includes healthy fats, and a cap on added sugar.
Published 09/01/2015
