I’d like to buy whole milk yogurt in mainstream stores. To do that I have to convince more consumers to ask for it and buy it so that Target and others will stock more of the moderately priced brands.

My challenge is difficult because for years our nutritionists recommended we use fat sparingly and exercise and food marketers then helped us begin our Low Fat crusade that turned into a No Fat religion in the USA. Consequently, we have all these nasty tasting fat free yogurts all over the shelves. The reason yogurt is thought of as a healthy choice over ice cream is not because it is free of fat, but because it has a nice tart taste we enjoy without having to add pounds of sugar. Appreciate the lovely work of the yogurt’s bacteria.

Now, our challenge is to reverse the crusade to Low Sugar because it turns out that scientific understanding of fat and sugar processing by the liver has changed since that time.

Today’s take home message: scientists have better distinguished between the types of storage molecules the liver makes for us after we eat. The liver creates different subtypes of LDL molecules depending on whether the molecule digested from the meal was a fat or a carbohydrate. Its ok if you didn’t know this I was appalled when I talked to an MD last fall who didn’t know this yet. Excess sugar is stored as a more harmful version of the LDL fat molecule that can prompt blood vessel clogs. Also, excess sugar is often modified in cruel ways that trigger or exacerbate other diseases.

Many people assume that the fat they eat always goes to their love handles, while the sugar they eat goes only to good use powering muscles and that joyful hyperactive brain feeling. This must be why many consumers, despite the recent science, continue to prefer to see less fat calories on the package label while ignoring the higher sugar calories sometimes on the label of no fat foods. That must change.

Total calories matters, of course. But a fat calorie is often more satisfying to our appetite. Therefore, many of us can live more comfortably consuming less total calories in a day if a reasonable share of those calories are from fat. If I eat a whole milk yogurt I feel satisfied for several hours. If I eat a no fat yogurt, I’m likely to get hungry again soon.

The molecules the liver makes from excess dietary fat is of less concern than was originally suggested (as long as we avoid the unnatural ‘trans’ shaped molecule that our bodies negatively react too *cancer*).

It’s a good idea to only eat as many sugars and carbohydrates as your body might burn in the short term. Go ahead and consume enough pasta to maximize your glycogen stores if you are planning for a 10k run race, but don’t tempt your body with too many carbs as the liver will then make a type of storage fat that is more likely to cling to artery walls.

Those lipid molecules from excess carbohydrate sugars are a type that will not float as easily in the middle of the bloodstream flow. They are slightly heavier molecules that sediment out of the laminar flow and are more likely to get trapped around any rough spots along the walls of the vessels. So they are more likely than the molecules processed from dietary fat (which consistently float in the middle of the bloodstream) to cause a sticky start that will narrow the artery tunnel.