What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

by Aubrey Gordon

While we eat slightly more vegetables and fruit than we used to, we still fall dramatically short of the dietary guidelines in all but two areas: meat, eggs, and nuts, and those “commodity crop” grains.8 But more meaningful, precise reforms would have required a well-resourced, savvy lobbying effort. It would’ve called for an overhaul of a powerful and wealthy industry, and it would’ve demanded money, social capital, and political will to take on the big businesses that had grown wealthy as a result of the very legislation that needed to be dismantled and reimagined. Instead, the PHS opted for a lexicon of personal responsibility—“most people should.”