How Much Fat Should We Have in Our Diet?
What we do and don’t know
Even as the public health community wages a high-profile battle over how much processed meat it’s safe to eat, the community of vegan or plant-based nutrition experts has been waging a war of its own over the role of fat and its various sources in a plant-based diet.
One camp contends that the optimal plant-based diet is made up preferentially of whole foods, but must also be low in total fat, period. For this group, almonds, walnuts, and avocados are off the menu.
Another camp maintains that higher-fat foods are fine, provided they are plants and limited to whole foods. So here, walnuts and avocados are acceptable, but extra-virgin olive oil — and any other extracted oil, for that matter — still comes with a skull and crossbones.
And finally, there is the faction that allows for “good” extracted oils, such as extra-virgin olive oil, along with good, natively high-fat, whole foods.
These differences might be minor. But alas, the civil capacity to agree about disagreeing, to differentiate shared facts from divergent opinions, is a victim of the social-media age.
We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts. Our topline question should be: What do we know, and what is…
