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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Great in depth journalism on nutritional politics
This book is not a health/nutritional book per se, but more like journalistic muckracking. If you are looking for dietary advice, this is not exactly the right book because you have to wade through a lot of historical and sociological material to find the nutritional gems of indirect advice.
The title is a bit misleading. Due to its in-depth journalistic investigative nature, I would title this "The Politics of Nutritional Advice." Taubes goes into great detail, leaving no nutritional stone unturned, as he covers the history of the anti-fat crusade and dispels the myths of dietary cholesterol causing blood cholesterol.
At the end of this book you will realize that obesity is not due to excess caloric intake and/nor a deficiency in exercise. Carbs are much more to blame because they (unlike fat) affect insulin release, the main hormone involved in fat storage. Gaining weight (or not) has much more to do with a symphony of hormones than calories.
You will also learn that there is a great deal of politics involved in determining which nutritional theories get funded (as is the case with just about any science). As he states on p. 51-52: "Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone who did."
Taubes didn't go into the benefits of the Omega 3s, which are proven to be highly beneficial in weight reduction. While he uses the example of the traditional Eskimos as being cancer-free, he overlooked the causes: 1) They were 100% raw fooders and 2) they ate a great deal of omega 3 fatty acids (which fish are high in).
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A serious study of food and health.
We get conflicting messages about what to eat and how to lose weight from sources that we would like to trust, like doctors and the government. This book shows that there has been some good research done on what makes us fat and sick over the last hundred or so years. But for some reason the research has not been treated as part of a science where we try to increase our understanding a bit at a time. Instead, as Taubes shows, the fight over food has been more like politics than science and we are all suffering from confusion. Taubes makes a case that when viewed scientifically the research seems to point to some clear answers that deserve more attention, specifically the problem of carbohydrates in our diet. I wish the medical community would take the issues as seriously as he does. I know that the information he provides has helped me to lose weight for the first time.
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A healthy helping of good nutritional advice
Have you ever wondered what drives the health industry in touting what is correct to eat for a good healthy lifestyle? Have you ever wondered why common knowledge tells us that fat is bad, carbohydrates are good, and that to have a healthy weight you should eat less and exercise more? In Good Calories, Bad Calories, author Gary Taubes tried to give answers to these questions, as well as showing how this advice may not be right.
The book is divided into three parts:
--Part one, The Fat-Cholesterol Hypothesis, looks at the effects of reducing fat, as well as the role the rise of awareness of cholesterol and heart disease has played on diet in the last few decades.
--Part Two, The Carbohydrate Hypotheses, shows readers how the Western diet slowly moved from one with more meat and fat in the late nineteenth century to one with more of an emphasis on breads and other carbohydrates. In this section, the author discusses the rise of refined carbohydrate use in meals, and how those are causing problems with both a rise in diabetes and obesity.
--Part Three: Obesity and the Regulation of Weight, talks about hunger, different diets, and how they work or don't with a person's metabolism to help them lose weight or to hinder weight loss.
As a layperson, I had a hard time with this book because author Gary Taubes gives his readers a lot of (sometimes it felt like too much) information on food, on nutrition, on different health concerns such as heart disease, diabetes, and the rise in obesity. His background as a science writer shows with the completeness of the information given. I did find that the information given aimed at a lower glycemic diet with its higher protein and less refined carbohydrates very interesting, as well as the fact that diets promoting such eating habits were not new in the sixties when Dr. Atkins first started promoting his diet.
I believe this would be an excellent book for anyone interested in finding out more about the various diet trends and advice given through the past decades.
Armchair Interviews agrees.
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Awful, awful, awful - never gets to the point
What a load of rubbish. I read this book in half an hour - ended up skimming it because it was so dull and because I could not make head nor tail of it. All the writer does is spew facts and data from study after study - he never sums up or gets to the point. Half the book is taken up with an afterword, an epilogue, a biography and the index!
I wish I'd seen his list of ten conclusions before I'd bought it - that would've been enough for me. The list, by the way, is on page 454! (The preceding 453 pages are gibberish).
I bought the book mainly because the reviews/accolades on the front and back cover are so good. Never again!
Do not waste your money!
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Interview helps understanding of book
First, this book is an amazing work of scholarship. I discovered it through a radio interview with Gary Taubes. I found the interview extremely helpful in understanding the book and have listened to it several times.
(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886898)
After my triple bypass I starved on a lowfat diet for 14 years and managed to keep my weight and cholesterol down; but my HDL was always low and my triglycerides high. Two months after reading this book and cutting way down on carbs and starting to eat all the fats I had avoided for 14 years, my latest blood test showed my HDL up by 20% and triglycerides down by 50%; and waist size down 2" while losing 5 pounds. I feel noticably stronger, so I'm guessing that while I lost alot of fat around the middle I've probably put on some muscle.
