I wanted to add one more thing. According to "The Perfect Health Diet" by Paul Jaminet, the reason Americans are fat is because we eat a lot of polyunsaturated fats (ie corn oil, canola oil). Your body is made up of saturated fat, so when you eat saturated fat, your body knows exactly what to do with it and the body easily eliminates it. Polyunsaturated fat is an unnatural fat and the body doesn't know what to do with it, so it stores the fat. This is a very interesting article about how Crisco infiltrated the American Medical Association and got them to endorse their vegetable oils, despite them being unsafe: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486