Name: Good calories, bad calories
ISBN: 9781400033461

Good calories, bad calories

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) via their dramatic effect 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. 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.

What Hacker News says

gregwebsOct 2024

Do you have any evidence you can point to for this assertion? The book Good Calories Bad Calories has a section that reviews the literature on the subject. Disease and Western Civilization reviews specific populations in detail. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration for a geographically diverse primary source although it’s not about cancer or longevity.

thread

dchristianDec 2022

I would recommend "why we get fat" by Gary Taubes. Calorie counting has be disproved so many times, but it sticks around despite the science being against it. If you're a doctor or researcher, "Good calories, bad calories" is the same material but at a clinician's level.

Low carb diets get insulin down and ketones up. These factors are more likely to be driving these other changes.

Also, low carb diets generally eliminate wheat and therefore gluten. Gluten becomes gluteomophin, which causes it's own problems (as an opiate). The standard American diet micro-doses an opiate at every meal. What could go wrong?

thread

michaelcaoOct 2022

I exercise daily. Transcendental meditation is a good choice for improving my mental health. I practice twice a day. Regarding health books, good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes is a great book for being healthy when you are older.

thread

pardsApr 2022

The diet-heart hypothesis promoted by Ancel Keys was based on bad science, cherry-picked data, and gross generalisations. The saturated fat used in his experiments was vegetable oil (margarine) and he extrapolated the results to animal fat.

The current theory is that heart disease is caused by vegetable oil and sugar.

The Paleo and keto enthusiasts demonize Keys as the root cause of the western world's obesity problem.

For books, try

    * "Good calories, bad calories" - Gary Taubes
    * The Paleo Solution - Robb Wolf

thread

goboronshkaNov 2021

I suggest you read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes before spending more time mocking keto. Ketogenic diets have lots of backing in science and have changed many lives and posts like these can be very hurtful.

thread

jkhdigitalSep 2021

It is shocking to me how few people are aware of this. I read Good Calories, Bad Calories almost 15 years ago and the idea that macronutrients have a meta-metabolic effect (i.e. on insulin sensitivity) now seems so trivially obvious that you wonder how it was ignored for so long. And yet people are still repeating the CICO mantra as though we are still in the dark ages.

thread