While I'm sure the lack of medical access and quality of are major contributors, I think this OECD document on obesity and overweight rates are telling as well:
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/economic-ineq...
This is because people can't read more than one thing, it's not a conspiracy on the part of the government.
Messages from the US government are correct, Americans in general consume too much fatty foods. That people can't look at what they're eating, see it contains 900% of their daily sugar intake and instead stop thinking at that bright 'LOW FAT' sticker on the front is not the governments fault.
And god damn, grains are a portion of the diet, they're not pushing a high grain diet. The food pyramid is 'all things in moderation' in an infographic form.
And grains aren't going to kill you.
What are you basing this on? I've seen no controlled studies supporting the idea that saturated fats are harmful.
Anecdotally, I switched to a diet high in saturated fats and without grains or sugars, and my cholesterol numbers went from good to absolutely optimal, with high HDL and very low triglycerides. Friends on the same diet report similar results.
"For specific fatty acids the following is proposed: saturated fatty acid (SFA) and trans fatty acid intake should be as low as possible"
"There is a positive, dose-dependent relationship between the intake of a mixture of saturated fatty acids and blood low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol concentrations, when compared to carbohydrates. There is also evidence from dietary intervention studies that decreasing the intakes of products rich in saturated fatty acids by replacement with products rich in n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (without changing total fat intake) decreased the number of cardiovascular events. As the relationship between saturated fatty acids intake and the increase in LDL cholesterol concentrations is continuous, no threshold of saturated fatty acids intake can be defined below which there is no adverse effect. Thus, also no Tolerable Upper Intake Level can be set."
Also, feel free to peruse the many references given here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Cardiovascular_di...
No, no study concludes they need to be cut out (they don't), but to say there are no studies suggesting there are higher risks with higher fat intakes is not correct.
And just for your high fat diet and everything is cool:
Hooper, 2001 "There is a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk with reduction or modification of dietary fat intake, seen particularly in trials of longer duration."
"Serenity now, insanity later."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-again...
One of the studies they reference: "In March the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a meta-analysis—which combines data from several studies—that compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease."
I doubt grains are that big a deal for most people.
Unsaturated fats are the only thing in the diet that is clearly bad and people still eat loads.
C.f. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-again... "In March the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a meta-analysis—which combines data from several studies—that compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease."
Coconut oil and dairy fat are safe. Other fats should really be minimized. To the extent that any fatty acids are "essential" you'll easily get them incidentally from foods. All vegetable oils are bad for you and fish oils are bad for you.
That being said, from what I can tell, unsaturated fats are a far cry from your claim of "clearly bad", and even farther from "the only thing in a diet that's clearly bad". From a quick Google search, it appears that there's preliminary evidence that high amounts of PUFAs increase the rate of metastasis in rats with cancer, and preliminary evidence that high amounts of PUFAs decreases the "all-cause mortality" rate and rate of cancer events in humans with cancer. With such a low bar for "clearly bad", one could dig up a thousand and one studies about refined carbs (let alone sugar) that make it infinitely more "clearly bad".
*I mean that in the sense of reading up on things from reliable sources (studies etc), not that I'm a researcher