The most controversial diet book ever written?

by Bob Sassone, Posted Oct 5th 2007 @ 5:30PM

Good Calories Bad Calories When science journalist Gary Taubes wrote an article for The New York Times magazine in 2002 arguing that (and I'm summarizing a lot here) that it's the excessive consumption of calories from refined carbs and starches that causes weight problems and not the excessive consumption of calories consumed from fat, he was attacked by everyone. Now Taubes has a new book out that expands on the topic, Good Calories, Bad Calories. And he's still being attacked.

I haven't picked up the book yet, but it seems like an interesting read. Unlike other diet and health books that talk about their diets in rather basic terms, this is a thick tome that really goes in-depth about the body, weight, and health, quoting various studies that have been conducted over the years. I think one of his theories even questions how much exercise a human needs.

Has anyone read it yet?

Filed Under: Science, Health & Medical, Books
Tags: atkins diet, carbohydrates, carbs, diet, diets, exercise, fat, gary taubes, GaryTaubes, good calories bad calories, starches, weight control

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Reader comments (Page 2 of 2)

10-08-2007 @8:23PM renee said... I will head to the bookstore to check out this book

Always a firm believer of PH balance for the body .. many carbs fall into the acid side, refined sugar is always an no especially for the build up of bacteria as well your system just can not break it down, so therefore it breaks down your imune system.

the more natural and organic and raw veggies is always good for the body.

have fun
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11-28-2007 @8:41AM mark-TN said... There seems to be a lot of confusion about this book. The book is not a diet book at all. You won’t find recipes, sample meal plans, or a list of supplements, etc. The book is an intensely comprehensive(full of material/extremely dense) investigation into the history of diet and nutrition research over the past 150 years. The book explores how the present day well ingrained low fat, high carb dogma was established and how its efficacy is not supported by the evidence. He effectively argues that the low fat, high carb diet that has been pushed on the population for the past thirty+ years is most likely the reason for the obesity epidemic plaguing the world today. Based on the evidence Gary develops an “alternative hypothesis” of what constitutes good diet and nutrition and he challenges scientists to test it out using sound scientific practices. (Something that Gary shows has not been done to support the present day Low Fat, High Carb Hypothesis.) The book is very enlightening and extremely well done, imo. Mark
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10-10-2007 @4:22PM marvmax said... I see a lot of people thinking that this is a diet book. It's not, it's only information about diets. And I mean diet as in what we eat, not a specific diet. He obviously thinks that Low-Carb diets are the way to go, but he doesn't give any recommendations.

I'm also a Type II diabetic and have had a lot of success controlling my disease with Dr. Berstein's _Diabetes Solution_ which is essentially a super low-carb diet. I got off all meds, dropped my triglycerides, and cholesterol and about 60# of weight. I've been doing the low-carb thing for 8 years now. As Taubes says in his book, if people realize that low-carbing can be a matter of health more people might be willing to live on low-carbs. It certainly worked for me. I wouldn't dream of doing anything else.
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10-10-2007 @2:50PM chaosotter said... In the past few years, I've gone from 290 pounds to 180 pounds (I'm 6'2", 31 years old) and kept it off. I did it with daily, vigorous exercise and a balanced diet that strongly emphasizes carbohydrates and vegetables, with much less protein and fat than I used to eat.

Could I have done it with a high-fat, low-carb diet? Hell, I don't know. Quite possibly.

The key has been eating moderately and getting off my fat ass and working up a sweat every day. That not only matches what every nutritionist who isn't trying to sell stuff has been saying for over a hundred years, it works for every single form of life that obeys the laws of physics.

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11-07-2007 @12:44PM Michael Gruber said... Just finished this book, and found it a remarkable piece of work. The main point I got from it was that nearly all the research on which official nutritional advice is based is seriously flawed. The obesity epidemic and the so-called diseases of modernity may in fact be attributable to refined carbs, and the Atkins type diets may be justified, but we just don't know for sure. A huge failure of the health community.
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