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

Description: Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes In this groundbreaking book, the result of seven years of research in every science connected with the impact of nutrition on health, award-winning science writer Gary Taubes shows us that almost everything we believe about the nature of a healthy diet is wrong.For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet with more and more people acting on this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues persuasively that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates (white flour, sugar, easily digested starches) and sugars-via their dramatic and longterm effects on insulin, the hormone that regulates fat accumulation-and that the key to good health is the "kind "of calories we take in, not the number. There are good calories, and bad ones.Good CaloriesThese are from foods without easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars. These foods can be eaten without restraint."Meat, fish, fowl, cheese, eggs, butter, and non-starchy vegetables."Bad Calories""These are from foods that stimulate excessive insulin secretion and so make us fat and increase our risk of chronic disease—all refined and easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars. The key is not how much vitamins and minerals they contain, but how quickly they are digested. (So apple juice or even green vegetable juices are not necessarily any healthier than soda.)"Bread and other baked goods, potatoes, yams, rice, pasta, cereal grains, corn, sugar (sucrose and high fructose corn syrup), ice cream, candy, soft drinks, fruit juices, bananas and other tropical fruits, and beer."Taubes traces how the common assumption that carbohydrates are fattening was abandoned in the 1960s when fat and cholesterol were blamed for heart disease and then -wrongly-were seen as the causes of a host of other maladies, including cancer. He shows us how these unproven hypotheses were emphatically embraced by authorities in nutrition, public health, and clinical medicine, in spite of how well-conceived clinical trials have consistently refuted them. He also documents the dietary trials of carbohydrate-restriction, which consistently show that the fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.With precise references to the most significant existing clinical studies, he convinces us that there is no compelling scientific evidence demonstrating that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, that salt causes high blood pressure, and that fiber is a necessary part of a healthy diet. Based on the evidence that does exist, he leads us to conclude that the only healthy way to lose weight and remain lean is to eat fewer carbohydrates or to change the type of the carbohydrates we do eat, and, for some of us, perhaps to eat virtually none at all.The 11 Critical Conclusions of "Good Calories, Bad Calories":1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, does not cause heart disease.2. Carbohydrates do, because of their effect on the hormone insulin. The more easily-digestible and refined the carbohydrates and the more fructose they contain, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.3. Sugars—sucrose (table sugar) and high fructose corn syrup specifically—are particularly harmful. The glucose in these sugars raises insulin levels;the fructose they contain overloads the liver.4. Refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are also the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, and the other common chronic diseases of modern times.5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating and not sedentary behavior.6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter any more than it causes a child to grow taller.7. Exercise does not make us lose excess fat; it makes us hungry.8. We get fat because of an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of fat tissue and fat metabolism. More fat is stored in the fat tissue than is mobilized and used for fuel. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this imbalance.9. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated, we stockpile calories as fat. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and burn it for fuel.10. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.11. The fewer carbohydrates we eat, the leaner we will be."Good Calories, Bad Calories "is a tour de force of scientific investigation-certain to redefine the ongoing debate about the foods we eat and their effects on our health."From the Hardcover edition." FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates, like white flour, easily digested starches, and sugars, and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the number. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning science writer Gary Taubes shows us that almost everything we believe about the nature of a healthy diet is wrong. Author Biography GARY TAUBES is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine and a contributing editor at "Technology Review". He has written about science, medicine, and health for "Science, Discover, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Fortune, Forbes, and GQ". His articles have appeared in "The Best American Science Writing" three times. He has won three Science in Society Journalism Awards, given by the National Association of Science Writers-the only print journalist so recognized-as well as awards from the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society. His b Review "A vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food." --Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food""Gary Taubes is a brave and bold science journalist who does not accept conventional wisdom." --"The New York Times""A very important book." --Dr. Andrew Weil "Brilliant and enlightening. . . . Taubes is a relentless researcher." --"The Washington Post""Easily the most important book on diet and health to be published in the past one hundred years. It is clear, fast-paced and exciting to read, rigorous, authoritative, and a beacon of hope for all those who struggle with problems of weight regulation and general health." --Richard Rhodes"A watershed. . . . Lucid and lively. . . . It could literally change the way you eat, the way you look and how long you live." --"Minneapolis Star Tribune""Taubes tackles the subject with the seriousness and scientific insight it deserves, building a devastating case against the low-fat, high-carb way of life endorsed by so many nutrition experts in recent years." --Barbara Ehrenreich Review Quote "Gary TaubessGood Calories, Bad Caloriesis easily the most important book on diet and health to be published in the past one hundred years. It is clear, fast-paced and exciting to read, rigorous, authoritative, and a beacon of hope for all those who struggle with problems of weight regulation and general health--as who does not? If Taubes were a scientist rather than a gifted, resourceful science journalist, he would deserve and receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine." -Richard Rhodes, winner of the Pulitzer Prize "If Taubes were inclined to sensationalism, he might have titled this book The Great Low-Fat Diet Hoax. Instead, he tackles the subject with the seriousness and scientific insight it deserves, building a devastating case against the low-fat, high-carb way of life endorsed by so many nutrition experts in recent years. With diabetes and heart disease at stake as well as obesity, those experts owe us an abject apology." -Barbara Ehrenreich "Good Calories, Bad Caloriesis a remarkable accomplishment. From a mountain of diverse scientific evidence Gary Taubes has drawn an amazingly detailed and compelling picture of how diet, obesity, and heart disease link togetherand how some of the worlds most important medical researchers got the story colossally wrong. Taubes proves, I think beyond doubt, that the dietary advice weve been given for the last three decades by the federal government and the major medical bodies rests on, shall we say, a slender empirical base." Charles C. Mann, author of1491 "A brave and bold science journalist . . . Taubes does not bow to the current fashion for narrative nonfiction, instead building his argument case by case . . . much of what Taubes relates will be eye-opening." -The New York Times Book Review "A watershed . . . Deeply researched and profoundly unsettling, the book proposes a seismic paradigm shift that could well undo our perceptions about the relationship between food and health. It could also literally change the way you eat, the way you look and how long you live . . . an unwavering challenge to conventional thinking . . . Taubes most elegant and surprising arguments examine long-held assumptions . . . lucid and lively." -Star Tribune "Fascinating . . . Mr. Taubes has a gift for turning complex scientific principles into engaging narrative." -The Wall Street Journal "A watershed . . . Deeply researched and profoundly unsettling, the book proposes a seismic paradigm shift that could well undo our perceptions about the relationship between food and health. It could also literally change the way you eat, the way you look and how long you live . . . an unwavering challenge to conventional thinking . . . Taubes most elegant and surprising arguments examine long-held assumptions . . . lucid and lively." -Star Tribune "Fascinating . . . Mr. Taubes has a gift for turning complex scientific principles into engaging narrative." -The Wall Street Journal "Bound to stir renewed debate . . ." -Miami Herald "His major conclusions are startling yet surprisingly convincing . . . his writing reflects his passion for scientific truth . . . offers plenty of food for thought." -Chicago Sun-Times "I think this is a very important book. Ive been recommending it to my medical colleagues and students. There are some very big ideas in this book…[Gary Taubes] has done a meticulous job of showing that many of the assumptions that are held by the conventional medical community simply rest on nothin Excerpt from Book Prologue: A Brief History of Banting Farinaceous and vegetable foods are fattening, and saccharine matters are especially so....In sugar-growing countries the negroes and cattle employed on the plantations grow remarkably stout while the cane is being gathered and the sugar extracted. During this harvest the saccharine juices are freely consumed; but when the season is over, the superabundant adipose tissue is gradually lost. -Thomas Hawkes Tanner, The Practice of Medicine, 1869William Banting was a fat man. In 1862, at age sixty-six, the five-foot-five Banting, or "Mr. Banting of corpulence notoriety," as the British Medical Journal would later call him, weighed in at over two hundred pounds. "Although no very great size or weight," Banting wrote, "still I could not stoop to tie my shoe, so to speak, nor attend to the little offices humanity requires without considerable pain and difficulty, which only the corpulent can understand." Banting was recently retired from his job as an upscale London undertaker; he had no family history of obesity, nor did he consider himself either lazy, inactive, or given to excessive indulgence at the table. Nonetheless, corpulence had crept up on him in his thirties, as with many of us today, despite his best efforts. He took up daily rowing and gained muscular vigor, a prodigious appetite, and yet more weight. He cut back on calories, which failed to induce weight loss but did leave him exhausted and beset by boils. He tried walking, riding horseback, and manual labor. His weight increased. He consulted the best doctors of his day. He tried purgatives and diuretics. His weight increased.Luckily for Banting, he eventually consulted an aural surgeon named William Harvey, who had recently been to Paris, where he had heard the great physiologist Claude Bernard lecture on diabetes. The liver secretes glucose, the substance of both sugar and starch, Bernard had reported, and it was this glucose that accumulates excessively in the bloodstream of diabetics. Harvey then formulated a dietary regimen based on Bernards revelations. It was well known, Harvey later explained, that a diet of only meat and dairy would check the secretion of sugar in the urine of a diabetic. This in turn suggested that complete abstinence from sugars and starches might do the same. "Knowing too that a saccharine and farinaceous diet is used to fatten certain animals," Harvey wrote, "and that in diabetes the whole of the fat of the body rapidly disappears, it occurred to me that excessive obesity might be allied to diabetes as to its cause, although widely diverse in its development; and that if a purely animal diet were useful in the latter disease, a combination of animal food with such vegetable diet as contained neither sugar nor starch, might serve to arrest the undue formation of fat."Harvey prescribed the regimen to Banting, who began dieting in August 1862. He ate three meals a day of meat, fish, or game, usually five or six ounces at a meal, with an ounce or two of stale toast or cooked fruit on the side. He had his evening tea with a few more ounces of fruit or toast. He scrupulously avoided any other food that might contain either sugar or starch, in particular bread, milk, beer, sweets, and potatoes. Despite a considerable allowance of alcohol in Bantings regimen-four or five glasses of wine each day, a cordial every morning, and an evening tumbler of gin, whisky, or brandy-Banting dropped thirty-five pounds by the following May and fifty pounds by early 1864. "I have not felt better in health than now for the last twenty-six years," he wrote. "My other bodily ailments have become mere matters of history."We know this because Banting published a sixteen-page pamphlet describing his dietary experience in 1863- Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public -promptly launching the first popular diet craze, known farther and wider than Banting could have imagined as Bantingism. His Letter on Corpulence was widely translated and sold particularly well in the United States, Germany, Austria, and France, where according to the British Medical Journal, "the emperor of the French is trying the Banting system and is said to have already profited greatly thereby." Within a year, "Banting" had entered the English language as a verb meaning "to diet." "If he is gouty, obese, and nervous, we strongly recommend him to bant, " suggested the Pall Mall Gazette in June 1865.The medical community of Bantings day didnt quite know what to make of him or his diet. Correspondents to the British Medical Journal seemed occasionally open-minded, albeit suitably skeptical; a formal paper was presented on the efficacy and safety of Bantings diet at the 1864 meeting of the British Medical Association. Others did what members of established societies often do when confronted with a radical new concept: they attacked both the message and the messenger. The editors of The Lancet, which is to the BMJ what Newsweek is to Time, were particularly ruthless. First, they insisted that Bantings diet was old news, which it was, although Banting never claimed otherwise. The medical literature, wrote The Lancet, "is tolerably complete, and supplies abundant evidence that all which Mr. Banting advises has been written over and over again." Banting responded that this might well have been so, but it was news to him and other corpulent individuals.In fact, Banting properly acknowledged his medical adviser Harvey, and in later editions of his pamphlet he apologized for not being familiar with the three Frenchmen who probably should have gotten credit: Claude Bernard, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and Jean-Fran Details ISBN1400033462 Author Gary Taubes Short Title GOOD CALORIES BAD CALORIES Pages 609 Publisher Anchor Books Language English ISBN-10 1400033462 ISBN-13 9781400033461 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2008 Publication Date 2008-09-30 Imprint Three Rivers Press Subtitle Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health Country of Publication United States Place of Publication New York DEWEY 613.283 DOI 10.1604/9781400033461 Audience General/Trade We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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