Hi all,
Dieting has been a major topic of conversation around the box lately and per my request, Scott Booher, one of our recent additions to the family has written up a nice article on a text that you aspiring dietitians might consider picking up. So, please find Scott’s thoughts on Good Calories, Bad Calories below. As always, feel free (in fact, I encourage you) to comment on Scott’s review in the comments page.
With New Year’s resolutions came a goal of learning a bit more about food and nutrition, and I’ve recently put away several books on the subject: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Eating Animals, and most recently Good Calories, Bad Calories.
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes is maybe the most heavily researched book on the science of nutrition to come along in decades. The book weighs in at 600 pages including notes. Rather than invent yet another pop diet or theory on the science of nutrition, Gary, a correspondent for Science magazine, methodically analyzes every nutrition and obesity study he could get his hands on spanning the last hundred years (he says that without the Internet the book would have taken him the majority of his career to put together). Here’s a summary of what he finds, and it isn’t pretty folks:
The conventional wisdom around food and nutrition has been driven by a small number of well-intentioned individuals who, unfortunately, came up with an initial thesis and then, through selective use of data and discarding any studies that disagreed, have introduced completely inaccurate myths into public policy and the American diet. In fact, Gary states that because of the methods used to come to these conclusions, “it is difficult to use the term “scientist” to describe those individuals…its simply debatable, at best, whether what these individuals have practiced for the past fifty years…can reasonably be described as science.” Here are a few of the myths eviscerated throughout the book, one detailed study at a time:
Myth 1: Fat causes heart disease and obesity. There is little real evidence that this is the case. There are however dozens of well-run studies (ignored) that show entire populations living on high-fat diets, but with a fraction of the heart disease and obesity that we have on todays western (high-carb) diet. Fat simply isn’t the bogeyman we have been lead to believe it is. Instead, it is likely that a high-carbohydrate diet is driving much of the rise in western diseases, including heart disease and cancers.
Myth 2: Obesity is either caused by a lack of willpower in eating too much, or a lack of activity (sloth). The real data instead points to a hormonal problem caused by carbohydrates signaling the body to pack away fat and not burn stored energy as it is designed to do, creating a vicious cycle wherein the body keeps calling for more calories while continuing to pack on the fat. The more refined the carbohydrates, the greater the negative effect on your health, with sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup at the top of the list. (An aside from another book: next time you drive past the Iowa corn fields think about the fact that very little of what you see will ever be eaten as ‘corn’. It will instead be manipulated into dozens of different molecules for highly-processed foods).
Myth 3: A calorie is a calorie, it doesn’t matter what the makeup of your meals are, and the law of thermodynamics (calories in vs. calories out) is the final determinate of human weight. The reality is that carbohydrates have a huge hormonal effect on the body, and our human evolution hasn’t caught up with the recent advent of large-scale agriculture and consumption of these heavily processed foods. Carbohydrates really are different than the other macro-nutrients, and our bodies are telling us this in rapidly-climbing obesity rates. And yet, we continue to be told that a large part of a healthy diet should be grains and other carbohydrates.
I found myself getting progressively angrier while reading this book. Consider that up to today, the American Diabetes Association is still saying that the biggest risk factor for type-2 diabetes is simply eating too much, and further considers a carbohydrate-restricted diet to be potentially dangerous. The American Heart Association allows its name to be plastered all over highly processed carbohydrate cereals if they agree to add a bit of fiber to the box. Really an eye-opening read folks.
So, I’m having a lot of fun incorporating this new information into my diet – hmmm, love the smell of bacon in the morning….
Please post thoughts, questions, ideas, or concerns to “comments”.
Nice summary Scott! For Myth 2 and 3, I think its important to note the hormone being referenced is insulin (Robb Wolf talks a lot about insulin response). For a little more info on the book, which I need to read still, check out this presentation, given by none other then Mr. Taubes himself. Warning, its LONG (a little over an hour, so stream it to your tv if you can), but well worth it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149#
In Defense of Food is next on my reading list also. Since mid-December I’ve gotten into reading about a lot of this too, and its shocking. For another quick viewing, the documentary “Fat Head” also covers similar material, but put together in a different manner. But it also covers the bases for low carb eating to control insulin, and health benefits of a high fat diet.
Hi Scott,
In all of the discussions and debate about carbohydrates and fats, something important is being glossed over. It’s not being ignored. It’s just that its importance for health has been underestimated so it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. I’m talking about omega-6 fat.
Gary Taubes, Michael Eades, Jimmy Moore, Amy Alkon, Richard Nikoley, Matt Stone, Peter (Petro Dobromylskyj), Stephan Guyenet, Kurt Harris, and everyone else of note in the low carb/paleo diet discussion community; none of them seem to appreciate the magnitude of the contribution of excessive omega-6 and it’s industrial derivatives to ill health. To be sure, omega-6 is included in the discussion. Everyone is familiar with its effects. It’s just that other health destroying elements have the limelight. For example, here’s a comment from Stephen Guyenet’s blog:
As has been reported in other studies, paleolithic dieters ate fewer total calories than the comparison group. This is part of the reason why I believe that something in the modern diet causes hyperphagia, or excessive eating. According to the paleolithic diet studies, this food or combination of foods is neolithic, and probably resides in grains, refined sugar and/or dairy. I have my money on wheat and sugar, with a probable long-term contribution from industrial vegetable oils as well.
This is typical. And I shared this attitude until just a few months ago. But after watching a presentation by Dr. Bill Lands entitled Why Omega-6 Fat Matters For Your health, I made a small dietary adjustment that promises to make a world of difference for my future health. I stopped eating peanut butter. For nearly forty years I’ve eaten a peanut butter sandwich for lunch 4 to 6 times a week. In just 60 to 70 days, the dull ache in my shoulder muscles has diminished, my leg and arm muscles have gained strength, and the pain I experienced every night when I stretched my tendons and muscles above and below my knees has diminished considerably. Needless to say, I’m extremely pleased with the progress I’ve made thus far and seriously disturbed that the omega-6 problem is nto getting the attention it deserves.
Do watch Dr. Lands videocast. You can access it at: http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8108 After the streaming starts, I suggest you drag the timer button to the 12 minute mark where Dr. Lands is being introduced.
David,
Welcome to the site. I’ll definitely check out the videocast that you and Greg have mentioned, but I’d love to hear a bit more about what Omega-6 does in our bodies. Mind elaborating at all? I’m curious.
Thanks,
Tyler Quinn
Thanks for the link David, that was a pretty technical presentation though, and not quite my area of expertise. I have seen and read other people talking a lot about getting proper Omega 6 – Omega 3 ratios. Current society is way to skewed to Omega 6, and I’ve read we should strive for more near a 1:1 ratio as opposed to like 20:1 how most people are on the high carb western style diet. Seems like a high O-6 ratio leads to more inflammation. I thought it was from lack of Omega 3, and had read how O-3 reduce inflammation, but from Lands’ presentation it seems like the causality is opposite of that. Where it may be more by replacing O-6 with O-3, you reduce your O-6 which reduces inflammation. I’ve seen Robb Wolf mention this and Mark Sisson too on Mark’s Daily Apple. Getting more O-3 in your meat is a reason a lot of people give for eating grassfed beef as opposed to mass market corn fed beef. Good discussion though.
Good summary. The book is worth the (long) read. It is pretty boring for the first 1/4 of it, but gets more interesting from there. If you don’t feel like reading it the video Greg posted covers a lot of what is in the book, but not all of it.
For most people looking to turn their diet around I simply recommend eliminating all grains and soy from their diet. Including oils made from those “foods”. And to not worry about eating too much fat.
Fat Head was a pretty good documentary. Kinda low budget, but mostly full of good info. It is basically a direct rebuttal to “Super Size Me”.
Mark’s Daily Apple is a great source of info on diet. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/