Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! Veteran food writer Nina Teicholz explains why everything we've been told about fat is wrong—and why we should eat more fat to avoid obesity and disease.

For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of 'bad' saturated fats. We complied with nutritional guidelines to eat 'heart healthy' fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, following a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What went wrong? In The Big Fat Lie, Teicholz travels back to the beginnings of nutrition science to show how over-zealous researchers made basic scientific mistakes that became enshrined in dietary dogma. Teicholz has pored over the massive research literature, interviewed hundreds of leading experts, and traveled from Tuscany's oil groves to the seal-hunting coast of Greenland to unravel the distorted claims of nutrition studies. With a lively narrative style akin to Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma and the scientific rigor of Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, Teicholz upends the conventional wisdom about all fats. She shows that reducing fat, especially of the saturated kind, has been disastrous for health, and that neither olive oil nor fish oils have convincingly been shown to prevent disease. Her groundbreaking claim that more dietary fat leads to better health, wellness, and fitness is sure to spark controversy and conversation everywhere.

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A New York Times bestseller Named one of The Economist's Books of the Year 2014 Named one of The Wall Street Journal's Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014 Forbes's Most Memorable Healthcare Book of 2014 In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods weve been denying ourselvesthe creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaksare themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease? In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma. With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fatincluding saturated fatis what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.