Talks at Google
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2011–2022
1:27:51 · 218K views · May 4, 2011
Gary Taubes presents the argument of his book Why We Get Fat to Googlers in 2011. He claims the type of calories matters more than the count, challenges calories-in-calories-out thinking and criticizes the low-fat dietary consensus.
Recommended in diet and weight-loss threads as the accessible case for the carbohydrate-insulin view of obesity.
8 comments from Hacker News
Actually you are most likely wrong. There is really good evidence that the number of calories don't matter and that the type of calories are everything. People associate the number of calories as mattering because they change other things at the same time. Please watch videos from Gary Taubes who wrote "Good Calories Bad Calories" and "Why we get fat". Here's his google talk: this video On a personal note, I lost 40 lbs and I eat far more calories now than I did before. Open you mind for a bit and really watch that video, you might be convinced that what you think about calories are all wrong. I certainly changed what I thought was true as fact.
msluyter correctly points to the Inuits as a good case against what you've said. Their diet consists pretty much entirely fat and meat yet they have lower heart disease and rates of cancer. [LINK] Pretty strange how their not keeling over from heart disease! Perhaps the traditional view of fat is wrong. Highly recommend you watch this amazing lecture by Garry Taubes at Google: this video He also brings a lot of other eye opening case studies to light such as obesity in Pima Indians during a famine.
> The only issue with sugars are the null effect on satiety and promotion of binge eating. > sugars make it easy to overeat Those are issues, for sure! And great reasons why when dieting, a good foundation is exclusion of carbs. But that's only scratching the surface. Let me give you another downside. Eating sugar causes arterial inflammation. When your arteries inflame, your body packs it with oxidized LDL which can lead to heart problems and strokes due to constriction in your arteries. Guess what causes arterial inflammation? There's more as well. We need to brush our teeth because of our high carb diets. It causes tooth decay and gum disease. Before high carb diets, our ancestors had healthier mouths than we do today. [LINK] > "You're walking around with a permanent immune response, which is not a good thing," says Cooper. "It causes problems all over the place." More as well! It turns out that calories is an oversimplified model of dieting. Here's a recent interesting study that paints it clearly: [LINK] But there's more! Garry Taubes explains a lot of reasons very well: this video There are so many reasons carbs are bad for you, not just from a satiation point of view but also from long term health points of view. I'm confident this post has actually done a disservice to the question why should we eat less carbs, but hopefully it's something you might find interesting and read more about and maybe change your opinion on. All the information, studies and evidence is out the
The problem here is that mainstream nutrition "science" is also a fad. It is also a dramatic example on how the Internet + an incentive can produce better Science than the traditional grant (and lobby system). Many of the traditional dogmas of nutrition have recently come intro question: the idea that eating cholesterol is what increases cholesterol in your arteries, the idea that salt is bad for you, the idea that fiber is good for you and many others. Regarding ketogenic diets, there are so many results and it seems to work so much better than what "they" have been telling us that the idea that this is a "fad" starts to sound a bit silly. Actually, some proponents of ketogenic diets are backing their claims with explanatory models, instead of simple epidemiological studies (which are, in my opinion, the lowest form of Science). Check out this talk if you want to know more: this video edit: this talk provides some convincing arguments against your assumption #1.
The linked pdf makes a number of factual errors. it incorrectly suggests that ketogenic don't encourage eating lots of vegetables and low-sugar fruits. It also trys to twist "not all calories are the same" into "you can eat as much as you want". and of course, trans fats should always be avoided. but you should really decide for yourself: this video [LINK]