Dr. Michelle Hauser, a Stanford University physician who trained first as a cook and worked at Berkeley's famous "Chez Panisse" restaurant, is spearheading efforts to help use cuisine as a bulwark against heart disease. Now since a lot of fine cuisine is, a la Julia Child, a lot of foie gras, butter, and eggs, it's somewhat counter-intuitive that fine cuisine would help with heart disease and the like, but what I've found as an avid amateur cook is that when I cook from Child's cookbooks, I lose weight.
How so? Well, one explanation comes from the "Journal of the American Dietetic Association" magazines I'd peek at as a teenager back in the 1980s (my mother was a dietician and ADA , now AND, member), and one of the theories for weight loss back in the day was that a lot of overeaters were seeking not a certain amount of food, but a certain amount of taste. And so the herbs, spices, vegetables, wine, and yes, butter and eggs have a big place in giving eaters that satisfaction, helping with obesity and, transitively, heart disease.
Heart disease? Yes. Beyond the reality of obesity's link, there's a fact that my mom taught me as a child; you don't need to worry about getting cholesterol in your diet, because your body will make it for you. In the same way, your body also makes a fair amount of fat from excess carbohydrates in your diet.
And so we would infer that to some degree, it matters less what kinds of fats and cholesterol you get in your diet, and more whether your diet is pushing your own body to fill your own arteries.
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