Be honest: That bacon, egg and cheese breakfast you scarfed down the other day was so delicious you’d love to have it for breakfast every morning. But like so many other health-conscious, weight-watching Americans, you just won’t allow yourself that indulgence. Instead, you opt for the usual low-fat, low-calorie and (oh-so-bland) oatmeal.

Now a new book, based on eight years of dogged research, echoes what more and more experts have been saying: Animal-based fats, far from being dietary demons, are actually good for us – and by eating more carbohydrates instead, we’ve been wreaking havoc on our bodies in the mistaken belief we were doing some good.

SLIDESHOW: 14 Guilt-Free High-Fat Foods

‘Not only does the best science now show that it’s a mistake to restrict fat in our diets,” says investigative journalist Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, ‘but our fear of saturated fats in animal foods – butter, eggs, meat – has never been based in solid science. A bias against these foods developed early on and became entrenched, though the evidence never amounted to a convincing case. And it’s since crumbled away.”

In an interview, Teicholz explained the error […]