Do Fat Free Foods Make You Fat?

Don’s Comments

It’s easy to get fat.  It’s inexpensive to get fat…. And let’s face it, IT’S FUN TO GET FAT.  If you eat salmon and two pounds of vegetables every morning and you like that better than Crispy Cream Donuts you are an amazing human being and you don’t need to read this.

However….

My favorite candy is Twizzlers I love them AND THEY ARE FAT FREE!   That makes me want to dance!  Because everyone knows if it’s fat free it won’t make you fat.  Right?

Do Fat Free Foods Make You Fat? –Brandon Leeker

Low fat food looks great on a label, but all it means is that the food itself is low fat, not that you’ll have less fat by eating it. Why is this though? Well to look at why low fat food can actually make you fatter you have to look at how it plays a role with hormones in your body.

Due to the increased rate of diabetes, you have probably heard the word insulin thrown around a lot lately. But who cares about insulin if you aren’t diabetic right? Well everyone should. Insulin’s role in the body as a hormone is to take blood sugar and process it into stored energy, a.k.a fat. Anytime anyone diabetic or not spikes their insulin, they put their body in an anabolic (meaning growth) state of storing fat.

So what do these low fat foods have to do with this? Well there are macronutrients in food which these are: protein, carbohydrates and fats. Each of these nutrients are processed at a different rate by your body. Carbohydrates are usually absorbed really quickly in your body and this can cause a spike in blood sugar, which then will lead to a spike in insulin. However, ingesting a fat and a protein source along with these can slow down the blood sugar spike, in turn lessening the rate of release of insulin. Studies have actually shown brown rice spikes blood sugar more than premium ice cream if you have the same number of carbohydrates ingested, but why? Well brown rice hardly carries any fat or protein within the food itself. However, ice cream has fat, and it also has a dairy based protein. This DOES NOT mean ice cream is better for you, rather that you should balance all meals between proteins, carbohydrates and fats. However you can do the same concept with ice cream, eat a protein and fat with it. However to get the same calorie load from both brown rice and ice cream, you would have to eat a lot less ice cream which may just make you hungrier in the long term.

But back around to why these low fat foods can make you fat. These low fat foods cut out the fat in your diet, they also usually add more sugar to flavor these foods since the fat is lost. It ends up being a double whammy for blood sugar levels because now, not only have you lost the fat to control a blood sugar spike, you have actually increased the amount of sugar as well. This primes your body to be in a fat storing state and nothing is more demotivating then dieting and gaining weight at the same time.

-Brandon Leeker