The nutrition establishment is finally starting to figure it out, decades too late:

It’s a confusing message. For years we’ve been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. “Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1,” says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. “Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar.”

Thanks, FDA food pyramid.

How many people have been killed by this wrong-headed advice over the past forty years? My own father probably died a year younger than my present age, partly from a fataphobic diet recommended after his first heart attack in 1968. This notion that “fat makes you fat” seems like a primitive “you are what you eat” mentality. It’s not just about thermodynamics, or at least, you can’t ignore the burn rate. Not all calories are created equal, when it comes to food’s effects on your endocrine system.

Oh, and speaking of the FDA, how many are going to die in the future because they screwed up the pipeline for new antibiotics? Either abolish the agency, at least defang it and take away its regulatory authority, and have it focus on research. It murders Americans by the millions.

[Update a few minutes later]

A potato-only diet? You always have to be careful in drawing too much from this, because everyone is different. It is nice to know, though, that potatoes aren’t as bad as we’ve thought, from a glycemic standpoint.