Good Calories, Bad Calories | Gary Taubes

Good Calories, Bad Calories | Gary Taubes | Read it.

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Good Calories, Bad...

	Good Calories, Bad Calories Gary Taubes Knopf, 2007 - 640 pages average customer review:based on 186 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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great book!

My son, a phys ed major and personal trainer, took this book back to school with him, leaving my 82-yr-old father, a retired chiropractor and nutrition expert, heartbroken. So I bought it for my father's birthday, and he says it's one of the best he's ever read.

Read it.

The book is hard to read, but it is well worth the effort. If you keep an open mind, it will definitely change the way you think--and eat. I admire the author's courage, because he is setting himself up for a wave of backlash from the establishment, even though all he is saying is "let's look carefully at the science."

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A Life-Changing Experience of Einsteinian weight but on a personal level

There are books that inform. There are books that educate. There are books that prescribe. Some books inspire. This is one of those.

In the accumulation of wisdom the most useful tool is an overarching explanation of a serious matter whether it is Warren Buffet explaining the core principles of successful investing or Albert Einstein giving us the key to understanding the universe.

Mr. Taubes has drawn together many threads of knowledge of human metabolism into a coherent explanation of how modern diet impacts us. I have, so far, bought three copies for relatives and friends.

By necessity, in order to influence the bastions of conventional wisdom, it is academic in tone and dry in its delivery. But those that read it with an open mind will gain immeasurably from the experience.

And the four star rating? A bit more editing could have made the information more easily digestible.

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