# Graham's diet: Fat or no? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 8, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667 "2004-09-08T19:33:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/1 "2004-09-08T19:33:08Z")
In [Cecil’s column on Graham crackers](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_053.html), we have the quote > [@](#): > > Strictly verboten were fat, salt, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, and stimulants. But in the next sentence, > [@](#): > > and they’d [modern dieticians] go easy on the fat- and cholesterol-laden milk, cheese, and eggs he recommended. So, was fat allowed, or not, in Graham’s diet? ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/2 "2004-09-08T20:07:41Z")
I rather fancy the obvious ambiguity in the word “fat” is operating here. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/3 "2004-09-09T00:15:35Z")
Just a WAG, but maybe people in the first half of the 19th century didn’t know how high the fat content in eggs and dairy is. The fat on red meat on the other hand is pretty obvious. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/4 "2004-09-09T02:25:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Just a WAG, but maybe people in the first half of the 19th century didn’t know how high the fat content in eggs and dairy is. The fat on red meat on the other hand is pretty obvious. That occurred to me, too, but the diet was vegetarian to start with. You don’t need to specifically exclude animal fat, if you’re already excluding all meat. And they had to know how fatty milk, at least, is, since you make butter from it, and they would know how much butter you could get from a certain amount of whole milk. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/5 "2004-09-09T03:11:18Z")
Did the definition: **fat** The ester of glycerol and one, two, or three fatty acids. even _exist_ in Graham’s heyday? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/6 "2004-09-09T20:19:00Z")
Probably not, but I would imagine that they had some other definition of “fat” which was almost equivalent. And strictly speaking, isn’t it only a fat if it has three fatty acids? The others would then be lipids, but not fats. At least in the eyes of the FDA this seems to be the case: Fat-free “fatty” foods like margarine and mayonnaise often have “mono and diglycerides” as a major ingredient. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/7 "2004-09-10T02:26:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Probably not, but I would imagine that they had some other definition of “fat” which was almost equivalent. Did they? Or did “fat” mean only “the white, greasy part of meat”? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/8 "2004-09-10T06:32:30Z")
Again, if that’s what they meant by fat, it was already excluded, by excluding all meat, so excluding fat is redundant. Nonetheless, I would imagine that they had noticed that you could fry things in animal fat, or in butter, or in vegetable oils, or the like, and that furthermore, all of those substances had similar taste and mouth feel, and that they all made paper transparent, and had made the connection that all those things were somehow related. Whether they used the name “fat” for the category containing all those things, I don’t know, but I’m sure that they did have such a category. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grahams-diet-fat-or-no/263667/9 "2004-09-10T14:33:24Z")
Unfortunately, the OED is less helpful on the subject than it might be, as it regards the butcher’s and the dietician’s **fat** as two aspects of a single meaning, but it gives no example of the dietician’s **fat** prior to 1860. For the rest, we must know why Cecil chose to put fat in a distinct list of things “strictly _verboten_”.