[geremiiah]

Aren't Americans the kind of people who will cut the fat and gristle out of their rib-eye and leave it on the plate? And it was like a thing of pride to not eat the fatty part because look how rich we are ... Now they suddenly all into slurping beef tallow. What?

[dessimus]

I think it has more to do with disliking the mouth feel/texture of fat and gristle than because we are so rich. But by all means feel free to gnaw away at that bone in the ribeye for the calcium if you're so worried about getting 100% of the all possible nutrition from a ribeye steak.

[bluGill]

There are 342 million Americans. Don't try to treat them all as a unified group. There are Americans who cut the fat, there are Americans who eat it.

What has changed is we have learned that fat isn't as bad as it was made out to be - it doesn't seem to have as large an effect on health as thought 40 years ago. That doesn't mean it is healthy - though some take it that way.

It was once observed that vegetarians being healthier than others could be explained almost entirely by vegetarians being less likely to smoke - something studies generally didn't even try to control for and so we don't know if that observation is true. There could be some other unknown factor in play as well that because it is unknown we can't control for it.

[allreduce]

Seems like Americans are into making up food theories instead of just eating with common sense and moving your body with legs instead of cars sometimes.