Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight

These are the most calorie-dense part of the foods we eat. As we noted previously, every single gram of fat or oil holds 9 calories. This is true for all fats and oils: beef fat, chicken fat, fish oil, vegetable oil, and any other kind of fat or oil.

There are various kinds of fat. The main categories discussed by dietitians are saturated fat, which is common in animal products and is solid at room temperature, and unsaturated fat, which is common in vegetable oils and is liquid at room temperature. Different kinds of fat have different effects on your cholesterol level. But

About 35 percent of the calories most Americans get every day come from fat. For a typical 2000-calorie menu, that is 700 calories each day just from fats and oils in our foods. By cutting out most of the fats in our diet, we can cut out hundreds of calories. To put it another way, if all the foods we eat are very low in fat, we can eat far more food than we could on a high-fat diet, without more calories.

We should cut our fat intake from 35 percent of the calories we eat down to about 15 percent. Eating 15 percent of our calories from fat is a substantial reduction. It is a powerful weight-reducing step and yields other tremendous benefits as well. We must go on a “search and destroy” mission for fat. Be on the lookout for fat in the two forms in which it comes: animal fat and vegetable oil.

*Food*	*Percentage of calories from fat*
Potato	less than 1%
Peas	3%
Black beans	4%
Macaroni noodles	4%
Vegetarian baked beans	4%
Rice	less than 5%
Cauliflower	6%
Spinach	7%
Broccoli	8%
Wheat bread	15%
Whole milk	49%
2% milk	35%
Extra lean ground beef	54%
Ground beef	60%

Animal fat was designed by nature to act as a calorie-storage area for animals. When you eat animal fat, you are eating all those stored calories. Animal fat is not only on the outside of a cut of meat. It is marbled through the lean part, too, almost like a sponge holding water. So, if you are eating meat you are eating someone else’s fat and someone else’s concentrated stored calories. It will put fat on you. Let’s take some examples:

Imagine that we are making tacos. Let’s compare two recipes for taco filling, one made with ground beef and the other with beans. Beef is high in fat; three ounces of ground beef hold about 225 calories. Beans are very low in fat, and three ounces hold only about 80 calories. So we can cut out nearly two-thirds of the calorie content by switching from the beef recipe to the bean recipe. A big part of the difference is the very high fat content of the ground beef and the very low fat content of beans. About 60 percent of the calories in ground beef come from fat. This is a huge load of calories that do nothing good for the body and do a lot of harm, from promoting heart disease to increasing cancer risk, and, of course, fattening you up.

Take a look at the fat content of various foods in the chart on the previous page. Remember, the fat contents listed here are percentages of calories, not percentages by weight. This is a critical difference. Whole milk, for example, is 3.3 percent fat by weight, because it is loaded with water. But 49 percent of its calories come from fat. Milk that is 2 percent fat by weight is actually about 35 percent fat as a percentage of calories. It is actually not a low-fat product at all.

“Extra lean” ground beef is really not so lean either: it derives 54 percent of its calories from fat. It is an abysmal food for people concerned about their waistlines.

Common Meat Cuts

*Cut*	*Percentage of calories from fat*
Chuck roast	51%
Rib eye steak	63%
Short loin porterhouse	64%
Hot dogs	82%
Bologna	83%
Most beans, grains, vegetables	less than 10%

Even the beef industry in its “lean” advertisments of the “skinniest six” beef specimens could not find any cuts of meat that are anywhere near the fat content of beans, grains, or vegetables.

All of these have many times the fat content of typical vegetables, beans, grains, and fruits.

The problem with meats, including poultry and fish, is that they are muscles, and muscles are made up of protein and fat. They contain no fiber at all and virtually no carbohydrate.

“Skinniest Six” Meat Cuts

*Cut*	*Percentage of calories from fat*
Tenderloin	41%
Top loin	40%
Sirloin	38%
Round tip	36%
Eye of round	32%
Top round	29%
Most beans, grains, vegetables	less than 10%

Advertisers sometimes claim that chicken and fish are low-fat foods. Are they? Let’s look at the worst and the best of the poultry line.

The chicken also contributes about 85 mg. of cholesterol. In addition, chicken pushes carbohydrates and fiber off your plate. No matter how chicken is prepared, it cannot get its calorie level down to that of the truly healthful foods, because chicken, like all meats, is permeated by fat and contains no complex carbohydrates or fiber. Fat always has more calories than carbohydrate.

*Poultry*	*Percentage of calories from fat*
Chicken frank	68%
Roasted chicken	51%
White meat w/out skin	23%
Most beans, grains, vegetables	less than 10%

Some people eat fish in the hope that fish oil will reduce their cholesterol levels. Actually, fish oils reduce triglycerides but do not reduce cholesterol levels. And it should be remembered that fish oils are as fattening as any other oils or fats. Like all fats and oils, they contain 9 calories per gram.

*Fish*	*Percentage of calories from fat*
Chinook salmon	52%
Atlantic salmon	40%
Swordfish	30%
Halibut	19%
Snapper	12%
Sole	9%
Haddock	8%

Many of these are as bad as other animal products. Others are in the same ballpark as vegetables as far as their fat content goes, but this does not make them recommended foods. Remember fish contains no complex carbohydrates and no fiber, and tends to displace these foods from the meal. All fish products also contain cholesterol and far too much protein (see pages 38–42), in addition to contamination problems. So, fish is still not a health food, although certain types of fish are much lower in fat than are beef and poultry.

In summary, meats, poultry, and fish have two main problems for those concerned about their weight.

First, like all muscles, they have inherent fat, adding concentrated calories.

Second, because muscle tissues are mainly just protein and fat, they reduce the carbohydrate and fiber content of the diet. They displace the fiber and carbohydrates that are essential to a satisfying and metabolism-boosting menu.

•The first prescription for cutting the fat is the V-word: vegetarian foods are power foods for weight control.

Vegetable oils have received a good reputation because they contain no cholesterol and are low in saturated fats. But their calorie content is the same as any other kind of fat. That should be emphasized. All fats and all oils, regardless of type (lard, pork fat, chicken fat, olive oil, fish oil, etc.), are packed with calories: 9 calories per gram. They are all the enemies of those in search of a slimmer waistline.

Let’s take an example with vegetable oils. As you know, a potato is a low-fat food that is also modest in calories. Only about 1 percent of the calories in a potato come from fat. When the potato is baked or prepared as mashed potatoes, no extra oil is added. But if the potato is cut into french fries and dropped in cooking oil, its fat content soars up to 40 percent or more. As a result, its calorie content doubles or even triples.

Compare the fat content of a doughnut (50%), which is fried in oil, to a bagel (8%), which is not. The doughnut has more than six times the fat of the bagel.

Little or no conversion is needed in the body before the fat we eat passes through the digestive tract and the bloodstream to the fat tissues of the body. But the energy in carbohydrates cannot be stored easily as fat. The body has to do a considerable amount of work before those calories can be stored, and many calories are lost in the process.

1 Large Raw Potato		2 Regular Fries
70 calories	+ Frying =	440 calories
1 gram fat		23 grams fat

Fats Are Calorie-Dense

Carbohydrate	4 calories per gram
Protein	4 calories per gram
Fat	9 calories per gram