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Fat finds favor on U.S. tables again

By Tara Duggan, San Francisco Chronicle January 11, 2017 Updated: January 12, 2017 5:33pm

Photo: John Storey

The Avocado Toast at Nourish in San Francisco.

Attitudes about fat are experiencing a sea change in the country, but the transformation is only very slowly reflected in official government advice. Take avocado toast, one of the biggest wholesome-food trends of the decade. It took until last month for the Food and Drug Administration to say that avocados can be labeled "healthy." The fruit previously didn't qualify - because it had too much fat. In recent years, many prominent scientists, journalists and diet gurus have been sounding the alarm that our decades-long obsession with choosing carbs over fat is only making America more unhealthy, and that the government has overplayed the role of dietary fat in heart disease and obesity, among other chronic illnesses. Like almost · everything in nutrition science, the issues are far from settled, but the new ideas about fat are taking root in grocery shopping.

"Avoidance of traditional health-related attributes like fat or cholesterol are waning," says David Portalatin, vice president and industry analyst of the market research company NPD Group.

The percentage of adults who checked food labels for total fat decreased from 46 percent to 31 percent between 2006 and 2015, Portalatin found. The percentage who checked for