The Big Fat Surprise

A global scientific consensus backed by heavy-handed government action has been telling you what to eat for decades. They were wrong. The obesity epidemic is the result.

More from the "settled science" file. A global scientific consensus backed by heavy-handed government action has been telling you what to eat for decades. They were wrong. The obesity epidemic is the result. -- RDM

by Matt Ridley
April 22, 2016

I live on a dairy farm. I love full-fat milk, butter and, above all, double cream. As a child I drank milk unpasteurized, straight from the cow — and I grew to be almost 6ft 6in, so it cannot have been all bad.

Nonetheless, I believed fat was bad for me because the medical establishment said so again and again. From time to time I made ineffectual efforts to take up margarine and even that watery stuff they call skimmed milk.

But cream remains a guilty pleasure.

I assumed that behind the advice to cut out the cream lay hard evidence from well-controlled trials.  Yet it turns out I have often been lied to by the diet police over the years.

There is no evidence that dietary fat is a big cause of heart disease, or obesity — and we have actually had the f…