The Diet Delusion
A brilliant debunking of the popular misconceptions on health and diet that also takes a hard look at the corporate world of the diet industry.Where mainstream nutritional science has demonised dietary fat for 50 years, hundreds of millions of dollars of research have failed to prove that eating a low-fat diet will help you live longer. Nutrition and obesity scientists have struggled to make sense of the paradox that obesity has become an epidemic, that diabetes rates have soared and the incidence of heart disease has not declined despite the fact that society is more diet and health aware today than generations ago.The Diet Delusion is an in-depth, scientific, groundbreaking examination of what actually happens in your body as a result of what you eat, rather than what the diet industry might have you believe happens and is essential reading for anyone trying to decide which diet - low-fat or low-carbohydrate - is truly the healthy diet.For years we have been deluded by the dieting industry. Now it's time to find out the truth.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
3people
2009–2014years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Anyone who still has any shred of respect for these "public health experts", who by all appearances are little more than irrational single-interest zealots intent on pushing through their pet theory regardless of evidence, should seek out and read The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes. It is an (IMO) authoritative excoriation of the kinds of processes and personalities behind these "recommendations" and will really open your eyes.
- I have heard this argument a lot, and I've also heard there is data to refute it. I haven't looked up the references, but this is covered in several nutrition books I have read, including: The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and The Perfect Health Diet by Paul Jaminet.
The observation is always the same: Cancer is one of the "western diseases" that starts appearing in native populations when they are exposed to colonists. And it's not just because of longer lives: people start getting cancer at higher rates at earlier ages.
Taubes blames the problem on insulin-like growth hormone that is secreted in response to high-carbohydrate foods, and creates an environment perfect for rapid cell growth. Pollan doesn't speculate on the cause, other than to say that there is something wrong with the western diet. Jaminet speculates that we will find more types of cancer are cause by infectious agents, since cell immortality and rapid reproduction is a perfect strategy for a virus and since we have found several so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_causes_of_cancer
- No, but if you ask this question on Hacker News you will get a muddled and slightly paranoid sounding synopsis of Gary Taubes' book on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diet_Delusion
Probably best to go straight to the source. I'm hoping it's a bit more naunced than the "biology is hard, nutrition is complex, therefore theories proposed by science journalists from outwith the field are more likely to be true" type stuff that you see bandied about online.
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