2017 March Board Book

"Food without lipids is usually bland and lacking fragrance because aroma can't stick around long enough for us to enjoy it," Bouzari writes. That's why fat-free cream cheese is terrible, he writes, even though it's close in texture to the real thing. When Nina Teicholz was growing up in North Berkeley, she ate low-fat dairy products while avoiding red meat, eggs and the Gouda and chevre filling cases at the nearby Cheese Board Collective. She even rejected her mother's invitations to celebrate birthdays at Chez Panisse, since the fixed-price menu was always full of lamb and tripe. At the time, Teicholz was, in essence, a follower of the low-fat diet enshrined in the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which influence school lunch menus, food labels and doctors' advice. Little did she know she would become one of that diet's most vocal critics as author of "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet."

"The basic contention of my book and my work is that the guidelines were launched based on weak science," said Teicholz, who was recently visiting family in Berkeley from her home in New York.

The most recent version of the federal guidelines, 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans , did remove a previous limit on total fat, as well as cholesterol. But they still recommend a limit on saturated fat to 10 percent of calories per day.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle