Good
Calories, Bad Calories
Challenging
the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease
Gary
Taubes
Hardcover
| Health & Fitness - Diets; Science; Medical - Occupational &
Industrial Medicine | Knopf | September 2007 | 978-1-4000-4078-0 (1-4000-4078-7)
| $27.95
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
Calories
These
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, AlzheimerÕs 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.
ÒGary
Taubes's Good
Calories, Bad Calories is 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.Ó
-Richard
Rhodes, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
ÒIf
Taubes were inclined to sensationalism, he might have titled this book ÔThe
Great Low-Fat Diet Hoax.Õ 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
ÔexpertsÕ owe us an abject apology.Ó
-Barbara
Ehrenreich
Gary
Taubes, author of Bad
Science and Nobel Dreams, is a correspondent for Science magazine. The only print
journalist to have won three Science in Society Journalism awards, given by the
National Association of Science Writers, he has contributed articles to The Best American
Science Writing 2002 and
The Best
American Science and Nature Writing 2000 and 2003. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.