The Diet Delusion: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Loss and Disease [Hardcover]

This is a BIG, highly readable and hugely informative book, written by American science journalist Gary Taubes. I read the US edition, which was published there as "Good Calories, Bad Calories". I assumed that when it appeared in the UK, it would arrive in a blaze of publicity. So far, it seems I was wrong.

Taubes' interest is in the scientific basis for the received wisdom about what makes up a healthy diet and what makes people fat. We all know (because we're told ad nauseam) that the current obesity epidemic is the result of people overeating and having sedentary lifestyles. And overeating is generally interpreted as eating too much fat and too few fruits and vegetables.

Taubes has spent years going back to the original research and interviewing scientists. And he's found that in fact, there is very little real science behind what we are routinely told about dietary fat. Instead, assumptions linking dietary fat to heart disease were made in 1960s America and the "fat is bad for you" bandwagon rolled on from there.

The book also challenges the view that obesity is "caused" by overeating and taking too little exercise. It's like saying that alcoholism is "caused" by drinking too much alcohol - as an explanation, it doesn't get you very far. Taubes argues that obesity is actually a problem of fat accumulation. If an animal's body is working properly, increased energy intake (extra food) will be matched by increased energy expenditure. Conversely, if you restrict food, the animal will be less active. In both cases, fat stores will remain the same. But if the body isn't working properly to maintain this homeostasis, and if instead, it stores calories eaten as fat and is unable to release fat from fat cells to provide energy, the animal is going to be hungry and lethargic, while accumulating even more fat. The typical symptoms of obesity.

And the cause of our obesity problem (and many other chronic diseases of civilisation) Taubes argues, could be a diet very high in carbohydrate (and particularly, refined carbohydrate). That type of diet leads to constantly high blood insulin, which in turn stops fat cells releasing fatty acids for use as fuel. Type I diabetics have difficulty maintaining body fat. People treated with insulin have difficulty not putting on weight. And as a society we are eating far more carbohydrates that ever before, not least because if we try to avoid eating fat, we tend to get our calories from carbohydrate foods.

This book isn't trying to sell us the "Taubes diet" or the "Taubes supplement range" - the author is trying to convince us, our doctors and our scientists that the current received wisdom is not only flawed but may also be causing enormous harm. The book is a fascinating, page- turning read, debunking many of our nutritionists' most cherished platitudes left, right and centre. Well worth reading.

After several decades of complete confusion - thanks to the bumbling incompetence of the scientific community and our government masters - I am now beginning to understand the relevant aspects of human metabolism, through reading Gary Taubes' groundbreaking book "The Diet Delusion". Not only do I now know that your body weight does not depend purely on how many calories you eat and how many you use - I also know exactly why.

Believe it or not, our mothers were right: starchy foods do make you fat! It turns out that eating fewer than 2000 calories a day of carbohydrates can make you very fat regardless of how much exercise you do, while cutting right back on carbohydrates and eating more fat - even if you exceed 3000 calories - can make you slimmer (and quickly too) without getting hungry. If you would like to understand how these things can be true, in spite of all we have been told, then read this book. I promise, you will understand.

There are no "new miracle diets" in here - just conscientious, accurate, painstaking explanation of the facts. Taubes himself is a journalist, not a scientist or doctor, so he has no axe to grind and no tenure to chase. He contents himself with reporting what has happened in nutrition research, ever since Mr Banting found he was unaccountably obese in the 1860s and was eventually restored to slimness and health through a diet that eliminated starchy foods. Then we had Ancel Keys and his cholesterol theory, and a gentleman named Newburgh who insisted that fatties simply have no will power. (Neither of those theories has ever stood up in experimental tests, which usually prove exactly the opposite).

A word of warning - "The Diet Delusion" is a fairly massive book, both in length and content, and will take several days to read. That's purely because Taubes lays the groundwork properly, gradually building up his explanation in simple terms that any lay person can easily follow. There turns out to be a lot of groundwork, but by page 400 you will be reading about the chemistry of insulin, triglycerides and fatty acids - and enjoying the intellectual stimulus.

Bottom line: Taubes has showed me that all my own empirical observations and experiences have a reasonable explanation, and I have not been going mad when the calorie sums didn't even begin to add up. The reason is one I hardly even dared to think of: the scientific establishment has failed utterly in its duty to inform us lay people of what is good and bad for us. Much of what governments tell us to do is not only useless, but positively harmful.

This is, without a doubt, the most interesting and thought provoking book I have read about diet and nutrition. Based on what I learned from this book my perspective has totally shifted on what may or may not constitute a healthy diet. I can not recommend this book enough to anyone who has been lead to believe their health may be at risk due to raised cholesterol levels or any other alledgedly diet related condition. Gary Taubes simply lifts the lid on what may well turn out to be the biggest health campaign of misinformation in living memory. The amount of information in this book is huge, and although it is extremely well written it took me about a week to read. I had to keep stopping and considering the implications. Mr Taubes has constructed a truly brilliant and informative book that is both damning of conventional dogma regarding diet and enlightening in respect of how our body actually deals with what we eat.