Science / Brief : Too Much Animal Fat in Diet, Report Says

Americans are eating too much animal fat and government regulations make it difficult for the food industry to market leaner and more healthful meats and dairy products, a scientific panel said last week.

Although consumption of animal fat has gone down, many Americans still are eating their way to poor health with too much cholesterol, fatty acids and salt, and not enough foods that provide the needed calcium and iron, said a report by a committee of the National Research Council.

It said “the incidence of nutrition-related health problems is significant, affecting either directly or indirectly nearly every American family.”

Among the diet-related health problems cited:

* About 34 million Americans are overweight.

* Nearly a million adults die annually of cardiovascular disease that may be related to the consumption of high-cholesterol foods.

* Osteoporosis, a disease caused by leaching of calcium from bone, strikes 15 to 20 million adults.

* Between 8 million and 12 million children are hungry because of inadequate diets.

The chairman of the panel, David L. Call of Cornell University, told reporters that animal products are a “mixed blessing nutritionally” in the American diet.

“In our food supply, they (animal products) provide about 36 percent of our food energy and between 36 percent and 100 percent of certain nutrients,” he said.

“At the same time, however, animal products contribute more than half of the total fat, nearly three-fourths of the saturated fatty acids and all of the dietary cholesterol.”

A change in some government regulations, along with education of consumers and technological advances by manufacturers of animal food products could correct the problems relatively quickly, said Timothy Hammonds of the supermarket industry’s Food Marketing Institute, a member of the committee.