Comment by Retric

Sure, that’s a reasonable take, but satiety research was also far less developed.

The general understanding at the time was basically a full stomach tells people they have eaten enough. We didn’t understand the multiple systems the body uses to adjust the hunger drive and how much a high carb low fat diet messes with them.

> I'm sorry, but this is simply nonsensical. Calories were EVERYTHING among a large portion of the population. What is your knowledge on the 1980s from, because it certainly isn't based upon observable reality.

Less vilified is on a relative scale, I was alive back then and there was plenty of nonsensical low calorie diets being promoted. However you also saw crap like the Fruitarian Diet where unlimited fruit meant people could actually gain weight on a diet that also gave them multiple nutritional deficiencies.

Low fat dieting is in part from that same mindset as fruitarian diet where it’s not the calories that are the issue but the types of food you were eating. Digging just a little deeper these ideas made more sense before global supply chains and highly processed foods showed up. Culture can be a lot slower to adapt than technology or economics, diet advice from your grandparents could be wildly out of date. Cutting X means something very different when you have 20 available foods vs 20,000.