Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on DI: Amazon.co.uk: Gary Taubes: Books

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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, 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.

About the Author

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.

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

Building on the successes of Dr Atkins. 23 Oct 2008

By Mr. J. G. Barratt

Format:Hardcover

Garry Taubes' Good Calories Bad Calories (GCBC), also know as the Diet Delusion in the UK, is a brilliant book that promotes what Dr Atkins and others have been saying for decades. Taubes does not deserve a Nobel Prize for this work, however, as one ignoramus suggests, because Garry has simply picked up the baton from Dr Atkins. For proof of this, and for a flavour of Garry's brilliant writing style, you can Google for Garry's infamous article, titled 'What if it's all been a big fat lie?', published in the New York Times, in 2002. You will see that Garry is strong defender of the brilliant Dr Atkins (rip.)

GCBC is filled with masses of scientific evidence that will shock you into giving up breakfast cereals, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, fruit-juice and sugar-laden junk etc. It is a fascinating read that will change you forever -- and it will most likely add years to your life expectancy too! Do yourself and your family a big favour.

BUY THIS BOOK!!

PS: I have been following a low-carb diet for more than 10 years now. In January 2008, aged 41, I had a full medical and full-body-scan (CT) -- my mid-life MOT I guess. And the result? I have an exceptional health profile for my age and the CT scan revealed no arterial plaque at all! Saturated Fat is bad for you? Bla! I am one of the healthiest specimens they've tested!

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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

What happens when someone checks the facts 4 May 2008

By Book Addict

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I had never had a problem with diet until I tried to assist an obese friend who was ordered to address the overweight or suffer the consequences, (loss of job, diabetes, death etc..) Under the supposed guidance of a medically trained nutritionist I changed our diets to what is generally referred to as a low GI diet. Never overweight myself, we both lost weight. My friend lost 85lbs and I fell to a weight barely in the safe range of low weight. I was constantly hungry and felt weak despite working out at the gym and other strength building activity. I even started to become sensitive to some of the 'good' foods that form part of this regime (in particular oily fish, oats, certain fruits and muesli). I knew something was wrong when I couldn't face my meals - despite raging hunger. I then went through a phase of binging on cakes and sweets - I put on weight rapidly and was still ravenous. Why had I of all people suddenly grown fat? I read Gary Taubes's book very carefully. He nails the problem perfectly. In doing so he is very even handed and appears not to take sides. If you pay attention however, the best diet advice is there. Just remember the name Banting and you can't go wrong. A brilliant resource for anyone prepared to take the time to digest it.

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Good sence Good advice 20 Nov 2007

By marcus

This is probably the most useful book on the impact of diet on health you'll ever read. Partly because Taubes succinctly overviews the diet-heart controversy, and partly because, generally, he manages to explain to the layman the research and its implications. The great value for me was his development of the alternative theory to the saturated fat/cholesterol hypothesis dominant now since the 1960s. Although the alternative carbohydrate hypothesis is not new, Taubes interviews scientists and their reviews the research since the 1950s to the present, showing how the specialists that are studying blood components in relation to the major diseases - cardiovascular, obesity and diabetes - demonstrate that by far the best predictors of any of these "diseases of civilisation" are certain fractions of blood lipoproteins and fats known as triglycerides - not cholesterol or total LDL (demonised in popular health policy statements). Guest what? These "VLDLs" and triglycerides are only produced in quantities associated with disease through a high carb low fat diet.... the very diet that the "experts" tell to use.