A new villain has been named, and it is sugar. If you’re keeping score, fat, once the key scapegoat of modern nutrition, is now ok.

A rash of recent studies, articles, and documentaries tell us to avoid sugar and carbs at all costs. They assert that sugar is the root of our health problems and the root cause of the obesity epidemic in North America, but they are only partly right. I fear that the reductionist thinking that led us to the war on fat, will lead us to other health issues in the war on sugar and carbohydrates.

About 40 years ago, we were told to avoid all fat. They key to good health was a low-fat diet, the experts claimed. A wave of low-fat and no-fat foods followed – no-fat dairy, low-fat potato chips, even low-fat bacon. Eggs were deemed evil, especially egg yolks. Now, evidence is emerging that many of the early studies that vilified fat, and created a 40-year low-fat food trend, were dubious at best. Fat is in.

The low-fat movement had unintended consequences. In many cases, sugar took the place of fat, and without fat to slow the absorption of the added sugar, we accelerated health problems like diabetes. We also invented trans fats (because real fat was evil), and got so good at creating artificial flavors that processed food became more craveable than real food (for a great book on this subject, read Mark Schatzker’s Dorito Effect).

We are headed down the same path with carbohydrates.

In the US, we love to simplify and conquer complex systems. We love the magic bullet. The food industry loves magic bullets even more, as it gives them a whole new growth segment to ride. The trouble is, we don’t really understand what goes on inside our bodies, but we keep trying to manufacture new foods to conquer our health issues.

And therein lies the problem. Not fat, not carbohydrates, but processed food. Even worse, processed food passed off as healthy food, and our grocery store aisles are full of them. We’re obsessed with trying to reduce our food to it’s macro and micro nutrients, and reassemble them in new convenient forms. That, I will wager, is what our bodies are having trouble coping with, and is what’s making us sick.

In the meantime, I’m going to stick with real food, and in twenty years, when nutritionists exonerate sugar, drop by and we’ll have some homemade pancakes and real maple syrup. And bacon. I love bacon.