Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 23, 2008 - Health & Fitness - 640 pages
This groundbreaking book by award-winning science writer and bestselling author of Why We Get Fat and The Case for Keto 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 despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates, like white flour, easily digested starches, and sugars, and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the number.

Called “a very important book,” by Andrew Weil and ”destined to change the way we think about food,” by Michael Pollan, this groundbreaking book by award-winning science writer Gary Taubes shows us that almost everything we believe about the nature of a healthy diet is wrong.

Contents

Part One THE FATCHOLESTEROL HYPOTHESIS
1
The Eisenhower Paradox
3
The Inadequacy of Lesser Evidence
22
Creation of Consensus
42
The Greater Good
60
Part Two THE CARBOHYDRATE HYPOTHESIS
87
Diseases of Civilization
89
Diabetes and the Carbohydrate Hypothesis
100
Unconventional Diets
327
The Carbohydrate Hypothesis
361
Fat Metabolism
365
Insulin
376
The Fattening Carbohydrate Disappears
404
Hunger and Satiety
425
Epilogue
449
Afterword to the Anchor Edition
461

Fiber
122
The Science of the Carbohydrate Hypothesis
136
Triglycerides and the Complications of Cholesterol
153
The Role of Insulin
178
The Significance of Diabetes
186
Sugar
195
Dementia Cancer and Aging
204
Part Three OBESITY AND THE REGULATION OF WEIGHT
227
The Mythology of Obesity
229
Hunger
252
Paradoxes
270
Conservation of Energy
292
Fattening Diets
305
Reducing Diets
313
Notes
469
Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
488
292
498
313
499
327
501
355
504
376
505
404
508
425
510
449
512
469
518
583
523
585
533
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

GARY TAUBES is cofounder and senior scientific advisor of the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI). He's an award-winning science and health journalist, the author of Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories, and a former staff writer for Discover and correspondent for the journal Science. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Esquire, and has been included in numerous Best of anthologies, including The Best of the Best American Science Writing (2010). He has received three Science in Society Journalism Awards from the National Association of Science Writers. He is also the recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. He lives in Oakland, California.

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