He admits that he can't explain why Asians, whose natural diet is high in rice and vegetables, with only a little lean protein, are not fat until they begin eating a Western diet. He unconvincingly suggests that it's because they don't eat much fruit -- a claim he does not document. The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from the data he presents is that it is the introduction of refined grains and refined sugars as basis for our diets coupled with massive overeating that has led to the obesity epidemic.
View all 9 comments. Dec 10, Kevin rated it it was ok Shelves: library. My son saw me reading this book and said, "Put the book down and go outside.
Some interesting ideas but I believe this journalist chose to ignore many important studies arguing against such a drastic dietary change. I get it But adding the copious amounts of high fat meats and cheeses makes no sense to this coronary student. For an alternate look that is backed up by literally hundreds of studies, read "Prevent a 2nd H My son saw me reading this book and said, "Put the book down and go outside.
For an alternate look that is backed up by literally hundreds of studies, read "Prevent a 2nd Heart Attack" by Janet Bond Brill. I find it much more helpful! View all 12 comments. May 27, John Hanson rated it it was amazing. I am a 36year diabetic, and I follow many, many diabetics around the world. The science is valid, the logic is valid, but you have walls that prevent you from hearing the story. Read this with an open mind, think about his ideas, and try it if you don't believe.
Understand a few things: ancient humans followed animals. North America wasn't populated by migrating pineapple hunters! Refined grains, refined sugars, and even refined vegetable oils are pin-points on the timeline of life. We have no business eating them in quantity.
Understand also the evidence that saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for us. You won't find the science because it doesn't exist. There's only a mish-mash of epidemiological evidence which no person should be drawing conclusions from. Let's get rid of them all! That's not science. The fact that cholesterol exists in plaque and saturated fats raise cholesterol prove absolutely nothing.
We've followed this advice for 40 years and we've only gotten sicker! But we make bad decisions you say. How do you explain obesity in six month olds. How do you explain a type 2 diabetes epidemic in the American military? These groups are fed by the food guides. If you think military personnel have no willpower, then you need to give your head a shake. Read the book and start thinking about things critically.
Aug 29, Margie rated it it was ok Shelves: food , science. An argument in favor of low-carb diets. I'm giving it two stars because I wanted to punch the author. A hint to all aspiring authors out there: if you find yourself writing, "As I said previously," 10 or more times in the first six chapters, you might be repeating yourself too much.
Taubes cites many studies, though notably almost none of them are recent. He explains why, but really makes it sound as though all current researchers into obesity and nutrition are a idiots and b highly invested in An argument in favor of low-carb diets.
I kept asking myself, "Why would researchers be so invested in that paradigm? Why wouldn't they want to make breakthrough discoveries? Why wouldn't they want to solve the issue of obesity and make a name for themselves? View all 4 comments. Jun 08, Natalie Cardon rated it it was amazing Shelves: sports , health , diets , food-and-drink , nutrition , science , fitness , food , nonfiction , self-help.
It is literally the best piece of writing I have ever read pertaining to weight loss. It answered every question I've ever had about weight loss, including: - Why do I eat healthier and exercise more than some of my friends, but I am much more obese than them?
I was either prophetic or intuitive when several years ago, I said to my husband, as we were watching The Biggest Loser, "I hope that one day people will change the way they look at obesity, so that they don't judge and blame people so horribly.
I hope that one day they will view someone obese not as someone who has a character flaw, but as someone with a medical problem, just like any other disease, because surely there is more to it, like hormone problems, and things like that. There was actually a reason why I was failing, and that reason was called insulin. The author's premise is that much of the best science and research on weight loss was lost after World War II.
He says they refuse to look at endocrinology, and fat regulation and how the body accumulates fat tissue. If one does that, one can clearly see that one of the biggest contributors to fat accumulation is high blood sugar caused by too much of the hormone, insulin.
Naturally, the solution turns out to be to stay away from carbs and sugar. And he doesn't just hope you take his word for it. Every page cites scientific studies upon studies upon studies. The author's tone is clear, logical, easy to read, and at times, humorous and ironic.
I enjoyed this book so much I didn't want it to end. I plan on reading his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, which treats the subject in more depth. I'm sure this will be the last "diet" I will be on because it will be successful this time. But I can't stress enough how enlightening this book has been. I feel motivated to give up the carbs because I now understand thoroughly the science and reasoning behind why they are bad for us and why they make us fat.
If I could stand on the street and give out copies, I would. That's how much I liked the book! View all 6 comments. Jun 12, Diane rated it liked it Shelves: nonfiction , medical.
This is a somewhat dense book, filled with numerous case studies and scientific research about why sugar and carbs make us fat. To summarize, it is all about insulin production, and whether the body is burning fat as fuel, or if the body is just storing fat. The book also discusses the decades-old line that to lose weight, you simply have to eat less and exercise more. Taubes disagrees, saying the formula is over-simplified and what is more important are the types of calories you eat.
There are This is a somewhat dense book, filled with numerous case studies and scientific research about why sugar and carbs make us fat. There are health benefits to cutting back on carbs and sugar, and extensive research is included. Despite needing to skim some chapters because they were so dense, the overall argument was persuasive and this book was inspiring enough that I am giving this eating plan a try.
The author includes an appendix with guidelines for a low-carb diet, based on a Duke University medical clinic. To summarize, you can eat eggs, meat and fish, green vegetables, and some fruits. You can also eat cheese, butter and cook with oils.
No bread or flour products, no potatoes or pasta, and nothing sugary, such as honey, jam, cookies, etc. If you remember the Atkins diet, it's similar to that. I was directed to this book by Gretchen Rubin, who mentioned it in her lovely and inspiring memoir, Better Than Before , which is all about forming and practicing good habits.
One of the ideas both Rubin and Taubes discuss is whether it is easier for someone to moderate eating a certain kind of food, or whether it is easier to abstain altogether. For Rubin and myself, I must admit it is easier to completely abstain from a food. Some people can successfully moderate, such as having only one cookie a week, for example.
I could never do that. I could never have just one cookie, just one potato chip, just one scoop of ice cream. For me, it is easier to make one decision to abstain from a food, and then get on with my life. I find it liberating. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the science behind a low-carb diet. Sep 24, Tras rated it it was amazing. I've been keto since February and have lost a little over lbs; I actually lost over 90 lbs within the first 12 months should you be wondering.
At my heaviest, I weighed lbs and wore jeans with a 44 inch elasticated waistband not the greatest fashion statement. I didn't exercise, ate an extremely high carb diet, had Type 2 Diabetes, and felt like complete and utter shit. At the time of writing this, I weigh lbs. I have a 32 inch waist, I exercise most days and think nothing o I've been keto since February and have lost a little over lbs; I actually lost over 90 lbs within the first 12 months should you be wondering.
I have a 32 inch waist, I exercise most days and think nothing of cycling 30 km, or walking the 10 km to downtown Ottawa. I don't eat processed food but I do eat meat, dairy, saturated fat, leafy greens, and certain vegetables. I limit my net carbs to under 30g a day, weigh most of my food because I know exactly how much I need , and I reversed my T2 diabetes a long time ago.
I'm basically living testimony for the advice and observations contained within this excellent book. If you want to lose weight, limit the carbs and it will literally drop off. No need to starve yourself with "low fat" bullshit, and you won't feel hungry. We now return to your regular programming Jan 03, Trishers rated it really liked it. This book is packed with studies and information that dispell the information we've been served up by government bodies for the past 50 years. Simply put, carbs and sugars are the cause of weight gain, not fats or calories per se.
You may feel this goes against the grain - :- - but it would be difficult to refute the arguments presented in this book. I certainly feel that the only thing I have to lose from following the guidance in this book is 20 unwanted pounds and a point or two off my blood This book is packed with studies and information that dispell the information we've been served up by government bodies for the past 50 years.
I certainly feel that the only thing I have to lose from following the guidance in this book is 20 unwanted pounds and a point or two off my blood cholesterol reading. May 22, Kerry Kelley rated it it was amazing. There are almost NO books I would list as a must-read by everyone. This is a rare exception. Taubes writes very accessible scientific non-fiction. He shows by walking through the scientific evidence - broken down so any lay person can understand it - how the conventional wisdom about nutrition, what is good for you, and what is bad for you, is almost all fundamentally wron There are almost NO books I would list as a must-read by everyone.
He shows by walking through the scientific evidence - broken down so any lay person can understand it - how the conventional wisdom about nutrition, what is good for you, and what is bad for you, is almost all fundamentally wrong.
I won't detail his findings here, because if you haven't heard his line of reasoning what I now believe to be the truth you might not read this book. Because, it is likely to defy what you currently believe. Yes, it is possible to change the way you eat, reduce cholesterol, risk of heart disease and diabetes, plus lose weight and not be hungry while you do it.
Check it out. Before diving into this book - stop to read the author's credentials first. His career is based in helping to debunk popular and bad science. Which is what our current cultural beliefs are based in. Here is a snip from the back page explaining in part why he is credible Thanks Julia for turning me onto this Sep 18, Kasia rated it did not like it Shelves: eat-me , non-fiction.
I call bullshit. Yes, insulin regulates fat metabolism, the rest of what he preaches is crap. In short, Taubes supports the Atkins diet, and we know how Atkins ended up. You eat his way, you will lose weight, just as you would on heroin or chemotherapy. Saturated fat is not the answer to the obesity epidemic, no matter how much this delusional bacon eater would like to believe it.
Oct 17, Krystal Williams rated it it was amazing. Author Gary Taubes takes you through a thorough explanation of metabolic function with regard to fat regulation including fat storage and fat mobilization , citing numerous published studies and clinical trials. Taubes does an excellent job of minimizing the jargon and maximizing your understanding.
He explores the origins of our current dietary recommendations eating servings of grains a day, minimizing dietary fat, etc. He develops a compelling case for why we get fat, and specifically outlines what to do about it. Jul 06, Kyle Nicholas rated it it was amazing Shelves: science , sociology. At the very least, it would help med students before they deal with patients who are overweight and suffering obesity-related health issues, who are also low-income no matter where in the world they live, to understand why people may be fat.
It's not that the obese are eating chocolate bars by the gross and then sitting back defending our "lifestyle choices" when we're told to lose weight, eat less and get up and This book should be required reading for EVERY medical professional from day one.
It's not that the obese are eating chocolate bars by the gross and then sitting back defending our "lifestyle choices" when we're told to lose weight, eat less and get up and exercise.
Medical professionals need to stop treating the obese, especially when the overweight are poor and come from food-insecure households, like we're just soft-addicted "druggies" who flat-out refuse to change our diets. Most of us don't have that option. This goes right to the heart of the issue in American society and the disparity between the rich and the poor.
The rich and by extension, post-grad medical students, doctors, nurses and their ilk are thin and healthy because they can afford NOT to eat. The poor don't have that choice. American doctors don't have to skip meals because they can't afford them, and they've never had to decide which of their children doesn't get to eat supper that evening. When government subsidies go to cheap processed carb-based foods and resources, it translates at the grocery aisle.
You can catch a good sale at Grocery Outlet for three candy bars for a dollar. No, I stand corrected. Feb 10, Leigh rated it did not like it.
Gary Taubes is either a fraud or an idiot. He gets almost none of the science right. If you are looking for someone to tell you that you aren't fat because you eat too many calories, this is the book for you. If you are looking for some real evidence based research, and not cherry picked studies to support a whack-a-doodle 'sell a lot of books to people who think there's a magical answer to weight loss' theory, then pass on this one.
View all 13 comments. Jan 27, Elizabeta rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. I really enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about how body uses food for energy. I will definitely try the recommendations to see how it will work for me.
There are also a lot of studies listed here that I've never heard of. It's all about the insulin! Jun 29, Abigail rated it it was amazing. All of us. But this book explains the science behind why counting calories is pointless, and reducing carbohydrates is the only way to lose weight.
Atkins or your favorite high-fat, low-carb diet book; otherwise read this book first. For me, so far sugar is winning, but at least I feel guilty about the right things now. I hope people read this book, so that we can stop arguing about things that are pretty well proven false now e. In fact, this book sticks to its title thesis admirably well.
And we know what we need to do about it: eat less and exercise more. Consume less fat. Rely less on animal products. If we can all just control ourselves and eat a low-fat, plant-based diet and get some exercise, everyone will be fine. Confession: until recently, I considered Atkins and co to be utterly misguided. But does it take into account how our bodies actually work? Not according to Gary Taubes.
Sure: to gain weight, I have to eat more than I discard, but what causes this? Is every overweight person really just gluttonous and lazy? He illuminates matters by describing a group of female rats whose ovaries had been removed.
They began eating incessantly and quickly became quite obese. In some cases, though, they were held to their usual diets. These rats also became obese, but in addition, were lethargic, moving only to gather food. Greed and sloth: end of story?
Without ovaries, they had no estrogen. Estrogen helps regulate how fat is stored, and prevents it from landing solely in fat, as opposed to, say, muscle cells. In the absence of estrogen, most of the fat that these animals consumed was being stored in their fat cells. This meant that their bodies had no fuel to run on. Once studies linked the amount of cholesterol in the blood to the risk of heart disease and nutritionists targeted saturated fat as the primary dietary evil, authorities began recommending low-fat, high -carbohydrate diets.
The idea that carbohydrates could cause obesity or diabetes or heart disease was swept aside. Because the most influential experts believed that people got fat to begin with precisely because they ate as much as they wanted, these diet books were perceived as con jobs.
The most famous of these authors, Robert C. Atkins, did not help the cause by contending that saturated fat could be eaten to the heart's delight—lobster Newburg, double cheeseburgers—so long as carbohydrates were avoided—a suggestion that many considered tantamount to medical malpractice.
Rigorous Experiments In the past 20 years significant evidence has accumulated to suggest that these diet doctors may have been right, that the hormone hypothesis is a viable explanation for why we get fat and that insulin resistance, driven perhaps by the sugars in the diet, is a fundamental defect not just in type 2 diabetes but in heart disease and even cancer.
This makes rigorous testing of the roles of carbohydrates and insulin critically important. Because the ultimate goal is to identify the environmental triggers of obesity, experiments should, ideally, be directed at elucidating the processes that lead to the accumulation of excess fat. But obesity can take decades to develop, so any month-to-month fat gains may be too small to detect.
Thus, the first step that NuSI-funded researchers will take is to test the competing hypotheses on weight loss, which can happen relatively quickly.
These first results will then help determine what future experiments are needed to further clarify the mechanisms at work and which of these hypotheses is correct. In this pilot study, 16 overweight and obese participants will be housed throughout the experiment in research facilities to ensure accurate assessments of calorie consumption and energy expenditure.
In stage one, the participants will be fed a diet similar to that of the average American—50 percent carbohydrates 15 percent sugar , 35 percent fat and 15 percent protein. Researchers will carefully manipulate the calories consumed until it is clear the participants are neither gaining nor losing fat. In other words, the calories they take in will match the calories they expend, as measured in a device called a metabolic chamber.
For stage two, the subjects will be fed a diet of precisely the same number of calories they had been consuming—distributed over the same number of meals and snacks—but the composition will change dramatically.
The total carbohydrate content of the new diet will be exceedingly low—on the order of 5 percent, which translates to only the carbohydrates that occur naturally in meat, fish, fowl, eggs, cheese, animal fat and vegetable oil, along with servings of green leafy vegetables.
The protein content of this diet will match that of the diet the subjects ate initially—15 percent of calories. The remainder—80 percent of calories—will consist of fat from these real food sources. The idea is not to test whether this diet is healthy or sustainable for a lifetime but to use it to lower insulin levels by the greatest amount in the shortest time.
Meaningful scientific experiments ideally set up a situation in which competing hypotheses make different predictions about what will happen. In this case, if fat accumulation is primarily driven by an energy imbalance, these subjects should neither lose nor gain weight because they will be eating precisely as many calories as they are expending.
Such a result would support the conventional wisdom—that a calorie is a calorie whether it comes from fat, carbohydrate or protein. If, on the other hand, the macronutrient composition affects fat accumulation, then these subjects should lose both weight and fat on the carbohydrate-restricted regime and their energy expenditure should increase, supporting the idea that a calorie of carbohydrate is more fattening than one from protein or fat, presumably because of the effect on insulin.
One drawback to this rigorous scientific approach is that it cannot be rushed without making unacceptable compromises. Even this pilot study will take the better part of a year. The more ambitious follow-up trials will probably take another three years. As we raise more funds, we hope to support more testing—including a closer look at the role that particular sugars and macronutrients have on other disorders, such as diabetes, cancer and neurological conditions.
None of these experiments will be easy, but they are doable. One ultimate goal is to assure the general public that whatever dietary advice it receives—for weight loss, overall health and prevention of obesity—is based on rigorous science, not preconceptions or blind consensus.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are not only serious burdens to afflicted individuals but are overwhelming our health care system and likely our economy as well. We desperately need the kind of unambiguous evidence that the NuSi experiments are designed to generate if we are going to combat and prevent these disorders. Insulin and Insulin Resistance. Wells and M. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. This level of carbohydrate consumption was not available to our ancestors year-round, making it a modern problem.
The indicators for diseases we now associate with obesity, including hypertension, diabetes, and stroke, have now largely been lumped under the term Metabolic Syndrome. Because these indicators—high triglycerides, high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol among them—are often associated with an expanding waistline, many have been led to believe that obesity causes the other associated diseases.
The insulin resistance is causing obesity and other problems. Another important logical flaw. The implications are fairly obvious, from a diet perspective. We should cut our consumption of carbohydrates drastically, especially those that digest into the blood most easily and cause the most drastic insulin response. It would be nice if we could improve on the foods to eat, foods to avoid, foods to eat in moderation.
The kind of long-term clinical trials have not been undertaken that would tell us more about what constitutes the healthiest variation of a diet in which the fattening carbohydrates have already been removed.
The goal is understanding whether a calorie is really a calorie, whether carbohydrate-restrictive diets are more effective and why and a host of other pertinent questions. Only good data will convince the public and the health officials it turns to for advice that things need to change. Their work is underway as we write. While nutritionists typically silo themselves, to a certain extent, in their own field, with some influence from psychology to explain why obese people tend to overeat, Taubes instead pulls from anthropology, biochemistry, endocrinology, epidemiology, and the field of nutrition itself.
By asking the right questions of the right people, he gets better answers. He also uses careful induction, sorting point by point the problems with competing hypotheses. This is something that reminds us of all great thinkers, from Newton to Darwin to Holmes to Munger. Nutrition is a field changing in real-time: It needs precise thinkers with a strong penchant for self-criticism, truth-seeking, contrarianism, and boundary-crossing.
Observational studies, on which most nutritional recommendations are based, are not science : They are hypothesis-generators. Correlation generators. Figuring out causality is a tougher task. The good news is that this core problem is solvable, and we suspect, like psychology, the field will come together in time. Read Next.
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