Yup, and after that came the "low fat diet" craze. And what happened? An obesity epidemic. Heart disease. Diabetes. Fat, tired people everywhere.
Your book was on the right track.. Now fat has been replaced by disgusting garbage ("vegetable" oils such as corn, soy, and rape), and sugar. Tons and tons of sugar. Look at the "food pyramid". And any government's diet guide. The Canadian food guide says that men should be eating 8-10 servings of grains per day (which converts directly to sugar in the body) and 3 servings of meat (and they even say meat "substitute" is okay). And they recommend things like eating margarine (which barely qualifies as food) instead of butter.
Lard is great stuff. It tastes great, increases HDL, and fills you up nicely without a sugar crash. It isn't full of omega-6 fatty acids like "vegetable" oils, and is metabolically neutral.
Our parents ate a lot better than we did, that's for sure.
I have replaced most grains and starches in my diet with fruits and vegetables. I end up eating a lot of meat, which means a lot of protein and a lot of saturated fat. And I am leaner than I have ever been in my life. Granted, this is pretty tough to do in Hong Kong :\
Lard is indeed delicious -- you can't make a proper pie without it. I was distraught when I went to university and couldn't purchase it nor other things our cuisine traditionally required (sassafras! chicory! a wide variety of legumes!). Eating margarine should be considered a sin.
I can't pooh-pooh grains though. Rice is a staple where I'm from and I can't imagine a life without it. One still can't get a decent variety of legumes here, though the ones available in the dry markets can be decent.
And it is sort of funny how food cycles in and out of academic favor. Eggs--bad, no, wait, good.
Researchers wish they knew.
And sometimes, when things are pronounced "bad" your intake of whatever would have to be so high as to be almost impossible. If you force feed a lab rat enough of anything, it causes death, and usually cancer.
And we are all going to die in the end, so pick your poisonus pleasure.