Gary Taubes Blows My Mind
Gary Taubes's Why We Get Fat is not a diet book. Nevertheless, it's the best diet book I've ever read.
Gary Taubes writes for the Science section of the New York Times. With a bunch of advanced degrees in both physics and journalism from Harvard and Stanford and those fancy kind of places, he has a unique ability to turn a keen critical eye on the research being done by working scientists in a variety of fields.
In his book Why We Get Fat, Taubes takes on the world of Nutrition. Specifically, he digs through all the myth and superstition to figure out what the science actually says about the causes of obesity. He sifts through the history of nutrition research, all the way to its beginnings in the 18th century, and exposes the truths that have been scientifically proven, along with the mistakes that have been made along the way.
If that sounds dense and a little -- well -- sciencey, it is. This was another audiobook read for me, which is good, because I could zone out here and there and come back to it unscathed. It also works on audio because, as I say, this is not another diet book. There are no meal plans, recipes, workout routines, or any of that stuff. Instead the book is an interesting mixture of meta-study, history, and investigation.
Dense, yes, but definitely worth it. Many of Taubes's stories are truly fascinating, and some made me downright angry -- particularly when it comes to the dozens of ideas that have become "accepted fact" despite being entirely untrue (6 meals a day, anyone?) There's so much to this book -- way too much to cover in just one post, so I'll stick to an overview for now, and hopefully come back to it. Here are a couple of key takeaways:
Gary Taubes writes for the Science section of the New York Times. With a bunch of advanced degrees in both physics and journalism from Harvard and Stanford and those fancy kind of places, he has a unique ability to turn a keen critical eye on the research being done by working scientists in a variety of fields.
In his book Why We Get Fat, Taubes takes on the world of Nutrition. Specifically, he digs through all the myth and superstition to figure out what the science actually says about the causes of obesity. He sifts through the history of nutrition research, all the way to its beginnings in the 18th century, and exposes the truths that have been scientifically proven, along with the mistakes that have been made along the way.
If that sounds dense and a little -- well -- sciencey, it is. This was another audiobook read for me, which is good, because I could zone out here and there and come back to it unscathed. It also works on audio because, as I say, this is not another diet book. There are no meal plans, recipes, workout routines, or any of that stuff. Instead the book is an interesting mixture of meta-study, history, and investigation.
Dense, yes, but definitely worth it. Many of Taubes's stories are truly fascinating, and some made me downright angry -- particularly when it comes to the dozens of ideas that have become "accepted fact" despite being entirely untrue (6 meals a day, anyone?) There's so much to this book -- way too much to cover in just one post, so I'll stick to an overview for now, and hopefully come back to it. Here are a couple of key takeaways:
- Society's ideas about obesity are rooted in religion, not in science.
- Calorie-in vs. calorie-out is an idea from physics (the Law of Thermodynamics), but the body is governed by biology, so it's much more complicated than that.
- Saturated fat and cholesterol have never been proven to cause heart disease or obesity.
- From the early 1800s, it was generally understood that high-carb diets caused obesity and poor health. It was only a handful of influential but wrongheaded scientists who in the 1960s changed our paradigm to focus on total calories and the "evils" of fats.
Bottom Line: Fitness Confidential got me wondering about a low-carb diet, but this book convinced me definitively. In fact, it changed everything I thought I knew about food. If you are at all interested in how what you eat affects your health, this is the book to read.
Thanks, Davey! Will check it out!
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