Customer Reviews

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

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This book is one of the most important health books I have ever read.

(My copy was called 'The Diet Delusion' which is the UK and Australian etc. title of the book 'Good Calories, Bad Calories'.)

The author is incredibly intelligent and that this book took the author more than five years to write, shows. I've read few health books so intelligently written as this one.

I thought I was quite well educated about diet and the need to restrict refined carbohydrates (for good health and to stop weight gain) but I learned so much from reading this book.

This book is not a simple book offering practical advice and a diet sheet but a detailed analysis of why low calorie diets don't work and why restricted carbohydrate/high fat diets do.

The book explains that:

1. The 'calories in, calories out' mantra is a myth

2. 'A calorie is a calorie is a calorie' is a myth

3. The 'just eat less and do more exercise to lose weight' message seems to be logical but is actually wrong and unhelpful

4. Overweight and obese people often eat no more calories, or even less, than their thinner counterparts

5. Low calorie diets also reduce the amount of nutrients in the diet

6. It is a myth that the brain and CNS needs 120 - 130 grams of carbohydrate as fuel in order to function properly, as the body can use fat and protein equally as well, and these fuels are likely the mixture our brains have evolved to prefer.

7. Restricting calories with a low fat/high carb diet just makes you hungrier and more lethargic and slows your metabolic rate. Weight loss is only maintained if the patients stays on a semi-starvation diet forever, which is impossible for most people and also undesirable. Being far more active just makes you far more hungry.

8. It is a myth that reducing calories slightly or increasing activity slightly will lead to weight loss.

9. It is a myth that we evolved through periods of feast and famine to be very good at holding onto fat. Fat gain is due to excessive insulin levels caused by high dietary refined carbohydrate intake. It is a sign of something in the body going wrong, not a healthy adaptation.

10. Fructose is not much better than glucose and the two together may cause more harm than either individually.

11. The idea of a weight 'set point' is a myth

12. Insulin is the overall fuel control for mammals. High insulin levels cause the body to store fat and stop the body from using fat as fuel. This means that high carbohydrate foods make you put on more fat, and also leave you still feeling very hungry and unsatisfied.

13. Our bodies have evolved to do best on a diet of plentiful fat and protein (including saturated fat), lots of greens and minimal fruits and starchy vegetables. This diet is the best for health and also for losing weight and stopping weight gain.

14. Dietary fat, including saturated fat, is not a cause of obesity. Refined and easily digestible carbs causing high insulin levels cause obesity.

15. To say that people are overweight due to gluttony and slothfulness is just not correct and it is very unfair. Overeating and a sedentary lifestyle are often CAUSED by eating a high carbohydrate diet! This association has wrongly been interpreted as a cause of weight gain, rather than an effect.

16. Hunger caused by eating a high carbohydrate diet (or excessive exercising while on a low calorie diet) is a very strong physiological drive and should not be thought of something mild and psychological that can be overcome with willpower. This is something serious occurring in the body, not the brain!

Thus psychological 'treatments' for obesity are inappropriate and cruel. Most people are overweight due to bad medical advice, NOT a lack of willpower, greed, laziness or because they lack 'moral fibre'

17. People have different insulin secretory responses. Even if insulin secretion is slightly off, weight gain can occur.

18. Eating large amounts of a high sugar and high fat food like popcorn is easy because the body will not use most of the carbohydrate and fat for immediate fuel but will store much of it as fat - leaving you able to eat a lot of it and still be hungry a short time later as well.

19. Eating foods with a large bulk or high in fibre wont fill you up, you need the correct proportion of macronutrients and will stay hungry until you get them.

20. Those advocating the low calorie and high carb diets for health and weight loss are not involved in legitimate science. These approaches are not supported by the evidence.

I have still not covered so many other great points!

The bottom line is that we have evolved to eat a diet that contains enough fat and protein to cause satiety, lots of green vegetables and minimal amounts of fruits and starchy vegetables. Our bodies really can't cope with huge levels of refined carbohydrate as have recently been added to the modern diet.

More detailed information about this type of diet (and the benefits of traditional foods as well such as raw milk, organ meats, bone broths and fermented foods) can be found in books such as 'Nourishing Traditions' and 'Eat Fat, Lose Fat' by Sally Fallon (of the Weston A. Price Foundation) and Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan and Luke Shanahan, among others.

This book is a *very* dense read. (Those that are very ill and can't read such a long and complex book may do best to read just the first chapter and the last 2 chapters as these provide a summary to some extent.)

My only criticisms of the book are that a brief, maybe half page summary, of each chapter at the end of each chapter may have been very helpful for those of us that struggled taking in so many new facts at once due to illness or any other reason. I'd also have liked the ideas of Weston A. Price to be featured a bit more prominently than just on the acknowledgments page! But I accept that space was a concern for the author, as he states.

To the author, thank you so much for all your hard work. This is such an impressive body of work. I wish we had more investigative jounalists writing about 'controversial' topics to such a high standard.

I highly recommend this book. Check your library for a copy, at least!

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

This is, without a doubt, the single most important book I've ever read on nutrition and diet. It's not a diet book. It's a guided history through the world of research done on nutrition and obesity.

It's a dense, brilliant and exhaustively researched book that many will not be able to get through, but for those who can it is supremely rewarding.

I have a whole library shelf full of health and nutrition books and I have to admit this book continually shocked me and when I finished I felt... educated. It's completely changed my outlook on food and nutrition and I can say it's changed my life forever.

This was a challenging read in two ways: the material seems quite radical at first (fat probably isn't going to kill you but starchy carbs and sugar probably will) but at times it can be quite technical and a bit dry - which is why I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

On the other hand, I found the sections on obesity, fat metabolism and the carbohydrate hypothesis absolutely fascinating and I couldn't put the book down. As someone who has only gotten fatter and fatter eating restrictive low fat, low calorie diets, this book helped put the pieces together and has given me the hope that there might actually be diets out there that will help me lose this unwanted weight and feel better about my body and my health. BUT - this is an important distinction to make, apparently - this book isn't a "diet" book, there is no prescribed diet plan.

I would definitely recommend this book - overall it is a great read and will hopefully make people question the deeply ingrained beliefs that low fat, low calorie diets are the solution to obesity and diabetes - despite evidence to the contrary.

There are some great quotes in this book.
'A colleague once defined an academic discipline as a group of scholars who had agreed not to ask certain embarrassing questions about key assumptions.' (Mark Cohen).
'The researches of so many eminent scientific men, have thrown so much darkness upon the subject that if they continue their researches we shall soon know nothing.' (Hilde Bruch, quoting Artemis Ward).
Being the end of an unbroken line of millions of successful ancestors extending into the primordial ooze, one would think that we're pretty well designed. One expects the weight of a well-designed animal to be well regulated'it should eat more if many calories are burned and eat less if fewer calories are burned. Nevertheless, there is an epidemic of obesity. What is going on?
This book is a detailed review of the research on the relationship of diet to obesity and longevity. To make a very long story short, the author argues that the emperor of dietary wisdom has no clothes. Most of the research on diet is correlational, motivated by preconceived notions that the studies are designed to support (rather than falsify), and fatally confounded. Recommendations to eat a 'balanced diet', to burn more calories than one consumes in order to reduce weight, and to avoid fat appear to be unfounded. The author has characterized the recommendations of the nutritionists accurately as the following guidelines for prevention of obesity from PEDIATRICS (2007) 120, Supplement 4, show.
'Evidence supports the following:
1. limiting consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (CE or consistent evidence)
2. encouraging consumption of diets with recommended quantities of fruits and vegetables (ME)
3. limiting television and other screen time (the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television viewing before 2 years of age and thereafter no more than 2 hours of television viewing per day), by allowing a maximum of 2 hours of screen time per day (CE) and removing televisions and other screens from children's primary sleeping area (CE) (although a relationship between obesity and screen time other than television viewing, such as computer games, has not been established, limitation of all screen time may promote more calorie expenditure)
4. eating breakfast daily (CE)
5. limiting eating out at restaurants, particularly fast food restaurants (CE) (frequent patronage of fast food restaurants may be a risk factor for obesity in children, and families should also limit meals at other kinds of restaurants that serve large portions of energy-dense foods)
6. encouraging family meals in which parents and children eat together (CE) (family meals are associated with a higher-quality diet and with lower obesity prevalence, as well as with other psychosocial benefits)
7. limiting portion size (CE)
The prevention writing group also suggests, on the basis of analysis of available data and expertise, the following behaviors:
1. eating a diet rich in calcium
2. eating a diet high in fiber;
3. eating a diet with balanced macronutrients (energy from fat, carbohydrates, and protein in proportions for age, as recommended by Dietary Reference Intakes)
4. encouraging exclusive breastfeeding to 6 months of age and maintenance of breastfeeding after introduction of solid food to 12 months of age and beyond,
5. promoting moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes each day
6. limiting consumption of energy-dense foods.'

The author argues that most of these guidelines are either wrong or based on inadequate evidence (although the first recommendation on sugar sweetened beverages is in line with his thesis).
Toward the end of this tome, the author betrays increasing frustration with low inference research that leads to conclusions betrayed by the 'inadequacy of lesser evidence'. The parallels between diet research and research in a number of other applied areas, such as the treatment of sex offenders, are palpable. This low inference research is associated with a politically correct style of orthodox discourse among nutrition professionals that similar to that observed in many other areas.
I think that at a fundamental level, we all suffer from the primitive belief that we are what we eat. If we get fat, it's because we eat fat. Moreover, because it is a just world, fat people are fat because they are lazy gluttons. If they'd just straighten up and live right, they'd be OK.
The dietary culprits appear from this book's review to be carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, sucrose, and fructose). High proportions of these foods are very recent changes to our diets. These culprits induce obesity by altering insulin metabolism such that the cells starve while the body stores calories in the form of fat. Sedentary behaviour is a consequence of obesity, rather than its cause.
What is the evidence for these radical claims? According to the author, restricting calories and/or increasing activity levels are not associated with reduced weight in the long-term'indeed, episodes of caloric restriction are often associated with increases in weight. Obese individuals ordinarily maintain their weight at a particular level, just as non-obese individuals do. Obesity is rare among hunters and hunter-gatherers, even though they apparently spend a lot of time leaning on their digging sticks. An exclusively meat diet containing lots of fat (as among the Inuit) is healthy. Laboratory animals can become fat on reduced calorie diets. Fat animals who are starved do not become lean, they lose muscle mass. Skin from the abdomen transplanted to the hand will become fat when the abdomen becomes fat. There are individuals who are fat from the waist down and lean from the waist up.
I have read next to none of the primary literature that the author cites but his interpretation certainly fits with what I do know. Interestingly, there is new evidence on exercise that supports part of the thesis of this book. Four 30-second sprints on a stationary bike twice a week were found to be at least as effective as 30 minutes of daily exercise in improving sugar metabolism.
In conclusion, this is a very thought provoking book that has pervasive implications for our diets and health. I think I'll go out for a burger and skip the bun.

Gary Taubes spent many years researching and writing this book, and it shows. We are the lucky benefactors of all his hard work.

If you really want to know the actual science behind metabolism and what humans were meant to eat, read this book. You won't need to study a dozen texts; it's all here for you. If you want to understand the politics and how the government and national health organizations managed to get things so terribly wrong, Taubes explains how it all happened. You will be properly educated and probably outraged, but you will also be able to make smarter choices for the rest of your (now longer and healthier) life. This book is the new nutritional bible.

Also, check out:

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

I am so glad I read this book. I like to know "why" and this book gives it. How is it that we've all come to believe that we need to steer clear of fat in our diets? How is it that when I follow the Food Guide I still don't lose weight? This book answers this for those who want the science behind the truth. For those who think carbs are harmless....READ THIS BOOK. Thank-you Gary!

This book was an eye opener. The lies and faulty science are exposed one by one by Gary Taubes,as far back as 100 years ago. It is a must read for anyone wondering how "Fat" got the bad rap and yet when we lower our eating of this we are still fat.

Taubes is exploring the idea that the reason why western civilization is having weight problems, diabetes, heart disease is due to diet high in refined carbohydrates or bad food combinations.
Concepts are great but presentation is left to desire. I've never read a book that is so reader unfriendly. I am unable to be objective here because I really did not like the writing style. It is very academical, dense and difficult to follow. If you are a fast reader like me and you like information to be clear, straight to the point, short and sweet, I suggest you to check out Living Low Carb by Johnny Bowden.