Thursday, December 24th, 2009...10:45 am
Good Calories, Bad Calories is the Best Book Ever Written on Nutrition
Remember that Top 5 Diet Books post I wrote back in July? All those books can take a HUGE step backwards. I now have a new favorite nutrition book.
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) by Gary Taubes is a stellar piece of research. For me this book connects all the dots between the evolutionary nutrition model, my own experiences and a hundred years of medical studies. Good Calories, Bad Calories tells the story of how we came to believe many of myths surrounding nutrition today and what the actual research says. He makes a strong case that the field of nutrition has been politicized and negligent since the 1950s. Without giving too much away, he makes the strongest case against carbohydrates and the current state of public health that I have ever read.
I love this book. When I finished reading the 460 pages, I started re-reading portions over again. However, unless you are a nutrition geek like me, I don’t know how accessible this book will be for you. I tore through it like a middle schooler reading a new Harry Potter novel. Some topics covered in the book include:
- The Fat Cholesterol hypothesis
- How obesity causes overeating and not the other way around.
- Insulin’s role in stored body fat.
- The connection between Alzheimer’s Disease and Carbohydrates.
- Why caloric restriction fails.
- A LOT MORE.
When I finished reading the book, I wondered how Taubes amazing research could be communicated to the average person. If the book was dumbed down it wouldn’t have worked. For me the answer is that this book will inspire many nutrition posts in the next year. Many of the concepts that I found to be the most interesting will be expanded and discussed on this blog.
5 Comments
December 24th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Taubes is writing a shorter version of GC,BC for non-nutrition geeks. Don’t know when it is scheduled for publication.
Taubes did not deal two important health issues, omega-6 fatty acids http://omega-6-omega-3-balance.omegaoptimize.com/2009/11/10/why-omega6-fats-matter-to-your-health.aspx and gut microbiota http://www.scribd.com/Gary%20Tiv .
December 26th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I gave in and bought it last week. I’ll be starting it this week.
January 16th, 2010 at 8:52 am
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