Cracking the Fat Riddle

So what would an optimal postmodern diet look like? Chances are it wouldn't look like the food pyramid, the official government guidelines released by the usda in 1992. Indeed, the food pyramid is due for an overhaul in 2003--although no one is yet willing to give any details. If Harvard's Willett has his way, the pyramid will make a greater distinction between the types of fats and carbs we should and shouldn't eat. Willett, unlike the usda, does not lump most carbohydrates at the pyramid's base or all fats at the pyramid's eat-sparingly pinnacle. In fact, Willett places good fats--those from vegetables and fish--at the base and good carbohydrates--from whole-grain versions of bread and pasta--side by side at the base. Carbohydrates with a high glycemic load join saturated fats at the top.

The question is whether the addition of these new concepts--glycemic load, a redrawn food pyramid--can restore sanity to a collective eating binge that has spiraled out of control. And if not, then what can? An appetite suppressant that makes people eat less but has no side effects? A thermogenesis pill that one can take after overindulging in ice cream?

Perhaps the future will bring better medications, at least for people who are morbidly obese. But for the broader population, the remedy must be sought elsewhere. And as we can't change the genes we are born with, we are left with one alternative--to change the environment that our genes have proved so ill equipped to handle. We, the species that invented barbecuing, that domesticated corn and wheat and that created foie gras and French fries, have powered through a series of food revolutions, says Oxford University historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in his recently published book, Near a Thousand Tables (The Free Press). The purpose of the next revolution, he predicts, will be to undo the excesses of the last.

--With reporting by David Bjerklie and Sora Song/New York, Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville