Moderate-fat diet best to stay healthy - expertsLONDON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Forget low-fat. A Mediterranean diet based on fruit, vegetables, grains, olive oil and moderate fat is the best way to lose weight and stay healthy, doctors and nutritionists said on Saturday. International health experts from 17 countries attending a four-day food conference in London are advising people to get back to basics to tackle obesity, heart disease and diabetes. "The accumulating scientific evidence makes more and more clear that low fat diets are not necessarily helpful for the population at large," Dun Gifford told Reuters. "Returning to the traditional diet of less carbohydrates and more balance with fats leads to much longer health and much less obesity and coronary disease," the president of Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, a U.S. non-profit food issue think tank, added. The recommendations by scientists attending the conference organised by Oldways challenge the assumption that only low-fat diets produce weight loss. The experts said diets do not need to be restricted in their total fat content as long as there is not an excess of calories. Most of the fats included in the Mediterranean diet are from olive, fish, nut and seed oils. They recommended foods low in saturated fatty acids, rich in carbohydrates and fibre and with a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids, mainly from olive oil. Saturated fats clog the arteries and are found in meat and dairy products. Unsaturated fats are in vegetables. Bread, pasta, rice and potatoes are rich in carbohydrates. The Mediterranean diet is also loaded with antioxidants such as vitamin A, C and E which neutralise cell damage from charged particles called free radicals. Antioxidants are recommended to fight cancer and heart disease. Gifford said low-fat diets gained popularity and were pushed by American nutrition experts more because of the psychology of food behaviour than science. "They wanted to attack saturated fat because that was the killer and they thought people couldnt make a distinction between saturated and any other kind so they attacked all fats," he explained. "The answer to obesity, the biggest health crisis facing many countries, is not a low fat diet, because it hasnt worked," he added.
