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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Fat is still bad in excess, you are just stuck in a different meme cycle where Americans pretend it doesn’t matter and surely couldn’t have anything to do with the rampant obesity.

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I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter". Even the extreme low carb diets aren't about eating fat in excess - if anything, people on those diets tend to lose weight because (a) not being able to eat any carbs gets monotonous fast and (b) fat induces a feeling of fullness, so people eat fewer total calories.

> I don't know of any memes where people say it's OK to eat fat in excess or pretend "it doesn't matter".

Hang around on Reddit for a day or two and you'll see them. Or heck, remember the Atkins diet, which was explicitly advertised as "you can eat as much fat as you want"?

Atkins doesn't say that, at all, and then explicitly mentioned extreme low carb diets in my comment.

> Atkins doesn't say that, at all

The meme version of it does, and their official website gets pretty close - fat is unrestricted, it's fine to eat as much fat as you have an appetite for, it's fine if a large proportion of your calorie intake is saturated fat. I guess "to excess" is subjective, but Atkins certainly says that fat consumption levels that respected medical authorities say are dangerous are fine.

Atkins theory was if people restricted their carb intake they would naturally eat a lot less calories. Because counting calories is difficult, the easier thing to do was just restrict foods to ones that were low in carbs

Try eating as much fat as you can, without any carbs to go with it. It's not going to be much.

It doesnt' matter in the sense that like 80% of what's in the typical American diet is far worse. All that fat that got removed was replaced with salt and corn syrup.

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