Fat Is Back

Once Nina Teicholz chose fat, she never went back. The author of the hard-hitting bestseller, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, says “I was a faithful follower of the low-fat, near-vegetarian diet, but when I started writing a restaurant review column, I found myself eating things that had hardly ever before passed my lips: rich meals of pâté, beef, cream sauces and foie gras. To my surprise, I lost the 10 pounds that I hadn’t been able to shake for years and, to boot, my cholesterol levels improved.”

In order to see if she alone was just a dietary miracle—or if there might be something more to a diet high in saturated fats—Teicholz embarked on a decade-long research quest that revealed the many flaws in our national nutrition policy and how so many of us became swept up in the low-fat craze.

Teicholz, who studied biology at Yale and Stanford and earned a master’s degree from Oxford University, ended up with a resulting book that is a solid, well-reported piece of science, but that also goes down as easy as a pat of butter on toast. If you’ve ever been confused (and who hasn’t) on choosing the right fats, Teicholz will give you more than enough ammo to sort it out. The book isn’t a rallying cry to start eating a bathtub’s worth of brie every night, but is instead a welcome reminder on why we should continue to make healthy fats—such as avocadoes, nuts, coconut oil and grass-fed dairy—part of our regular rotation. Cheers to easy choices.

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