Gary Taubes
Paperback | Pages: 634 pages Rating: 4.18 | 8640 Users | 787 Reviews
Specify Regarding Books Good Calories, Bad Calories
| Title | : | Good Calories, Bad Calories |
| Author | : | Gary Taubes |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 634 pages |
| Published | : | September 23rd 2008 by Anchor (first published August 5th 2004) |
| Categories | : | Health. Nonfiction. Food and Drink. Food. Nutrition. Science. Diets. Sports. Fitness |
Narration Supposing Books Good Calories, Bad Calories
Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight, and DiseaseIn 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) and sugars–via their dramatic and longterm effects 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.
Good Calories
These are from foods without easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars. These foods can be eaten without restraint.
Meat, fish, fowl, cheese, eggs, butter, and non-starchy vegetables.
Bad Calories
These are from foods that stimulate excessive insulin secretion and so make us fat and increase our risk of chronic disease—all refined and easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars. The key is not how much vitamins and minerals they contain, but how quickly they are digested. (So apple juice or even green vegetable juices are not necessarily any healthier than soda.)
Bread and other baked goods, potatoes, yams, rice, pasta, cereal grains, corn, sugar (sucrose and high fructose corn syrup), ice cream, candy, soft drinks, fruit juices, bananas and other tropical fruits, and beer.
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.
With precise references to the most significant existing clinical studies, he convinces us that there is no compelling scientific evidence demonstrating that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, that salt causes high blood pressure, and that fiber is a necessary part of a healthy diet. Based on the evidence that does exist, he leads us to conclude that the only healthy way to lose weight and remain lean is to eat fewer carbohydrates or to change the type of the carbohydrates we do eat, and, for some of us, perhaps to eat virtually none at all.
The 11 Critical Conclusions of Good Calories, Bad Calories:
1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, does not cause heart disease.
2. Carbohydrates do, because of their effect on the hormone insulin. The more easily-digestible and refined the carbohydrates and the more fructose they contain, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.
3. Sugars—sucrose (table sugar) and high fructose corn syrup specifically—are particularly harmful. The glucose in these sugars raises insulin levels; the fructose they contain overloads the liver.
4. Refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are also the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and the other common chronic diseases of modern times.
5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating and not sedentary behavior.
6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter any more than it causes a child to grow taller.
7. Exercise does not make us lose excess fat; it makes us hungry.
8. We get fat because of an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of fat tissue and fat metabolism. More fat is stored in the fat tissue than is mobilized and used for fuel. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this imbalance.
9. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated, we stockpile calories as fat. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and burn it for fuel.
10. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.
11. The fewer carbohydrates we eat, the leaner we will be.
Good Calories, Bad Calories is a tour de force of scientific investigation–certain to redefine the ongoing debate about the foods we eat and their effects on our health.
From the Hardcover edition.
Describe Books To Good Calories, Bad Calories
| Original Title: | Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease |
| ISBN: | 1400033462 (ISBN13: 9781400033461) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Regarding Books Good Calories, Bad Calories
Ratings: 4.18 From 8640 Users | 787 ReviewsColumn Regarding Books Good Calories, Bad Calories
First the bad - this book is a slog, especially the first third of it. It definitely takes some effort to read. That said, if you're interested in nutrition, or fitness, or biology or, as I am, debunking and exposing bad science, you should read this book. Taubes makes a convincing case for the idea that the dietary guidelines we Americans have been getting for the last forty years are not healthy and are making us fatter and less fit. He shows how obesity is considered a moral failing (lazinessNothing is more frustrating than following all the right steps, sticking to your good eating and exercise habits, getting on the scale and seeing absolutely no drop. Or worse, you've gained.But what if they were wrong? You know, all those rules your mother or father instilled into your young mind about staying away from cheese and butter, eating low-fat and limiting red meat. What if the government's famous food pyramid was actually based on incomplete data, that when actually looked at closely,
Wow, this was a long book. I've listened to The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet and Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, so the first part of this book wasn't new to me. Doesn't mean I'm not still annoyed that the entire basis of our United States low-fat diet is based on someone's ego and faulty science. At the end of this one, the author said he had a hard time calling these people scientists, and I completely
{This is a long review, but I wanted to quote from the Epilogue because I think it sums up with whole book in fairly simple language. So if you read this you can pat yourself on the back and say "I just read a 601 page book today, summed up". I think Gary Taubes findings will surprise you, it seems to go against everything I thought I knew about nutrition. And since I have a tendency to believe everything I read, I'm very confused right now.} The whole time I was "reading" this book (I read two
I read Good Calories, Bad Calories over several months. This book is incredibly well researched (Gary Taubes says he's spent over fifteen years researching the book), and very well written. It examines the science behind the "carbohydrate hypothesis." The hypothesis is that excess carbohydrate consumption, specifically sugar, high fructose corn syrup and other refined carbohydrates (e.g. white bread and white rice) is behind the rise in obesity over the last twenty years.In order to make this
It's difficult to recommend this book highly enough. There are at least three topics about which the common wisdom is completely overturned by the author in this book: the physiology of fat accumulation and obesity, the causes of the "diseases of civilization" such diabetes and heart conditions, and the nature of a healthy diet which will produce weight loss along with physical and mental well-being. Pretty much everything we have been brought up to believe regarding these subjects is
This book is like the Copernican Revolution of diet advice: reverse one key assumption, and suddenly all the evidence that didn't fit the previous hypothesis suddenly makes sense. Taubes suggests that we've mixed up cause and effect: we don't get fat because we eat too many calories and don't get enough exercise. It's the other way around: we eat too many calories and don't have the energy to exercise because we're fat. That is to say, obesity is a medical condition caused by our body channeling
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