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) 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.
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