Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

Has anyone read Gary Taubes Good Calories, Bad Calories? It came out of a New York Times Magazine article. It blew my mind. I have been writing about healthy eating for years and this book really has called into question everything I believed about food and fat and carbs...and now that I am eating according to what the science says (Taubes book is NOT a diet book, it's a science book about how we have been mislead about food) I am losing those frustrating "last 20 pounds" easily and quickly. I would like to know if anyone else has read this book and what they think.

 

 

what does he say about the carbs &fat? i wanna know =)

I haven't actually read the book, but there is a review of the book here that I thought was really interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/books/revie w/Kolata-t.html

 

Original Post by amilojev:

I haven't actually read the book, but there is a review of the book here that I thought was really interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/books/revie w/Kolata-t.html

 

the link didnt work but i searched gary taubes &read one article anyways. =P

we dont think fat is bad tho.... we just think we should be eating alot of good fats. not the cruddy fast food &ice cream fats..

Since I don't believe there is such a thing as a "good" or "bad" calorie, I'll have to check it out.

HI -

Basically, Taubes says that carbs, both simple (white flour, bread, white rice, potatoes) and complex (like grains and beans!) and refined sugar, especially high fructose corn syrup and white sugar, are really what makes you (uh, me!) fat...and that basically, Dr. Atkins seems to have been right all along. Taubes took a lot of heat when the Times article came out (you can find it online if you google Gary Taubes) and then he wrote this big book for Knopf, which I just finished going through. But on the other hadn, no one could say he was wrong, it's just that a lot of food people and nutritionists don;t like to consider the idea that fat does not make you fat. It is not a diet book, but it talks about how all the science about food and fat has been really misinterpreted. I have been eating lots of meat, fish and poultry, nuts, olive oil, cheese, and green veggies and I tell you I have never seen pounds come off faster, and not felt hungry or irritable. I have been against Atkins for years, and I write about healthy eating for a lot of health magazines...so Taubes has really been an eye opener for me. If you can stick with the book, it's fascinating. Or, find the articel online that was in the Times - that's good too.

 

 

HI! You DO have to check it out. It really blew my mind...Taubes' lays out the existing scientific evidence really well (although the book is dense, it's not difficult). After years of writing about "healthy eating" - basically "carb eating" for health magazines, I now find myself in a bind about it. I sort of feel mislead - and Taubes is convincing. I guess I am very exited about it because it's the first time someone has challenged the conventional wisdom so convincingly and with so much documentation. 

There is a thread on the Fitness Board that was posted today with a link to an article about Saturated Fat.  The article says that Saturated Fat has been wrongly accused for years of leading to higher levels of heart disease.  The study sited in the article found that High Carb low Fat diets increase the risk of heart disease while low carb diets that include saturated fat reduce cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease.  They concluded that high carb diets cause an insulin spike which triggers the body to convert carbs to fat and this fat leads to heart disease, not fat that you ingest.

(edit to add: "Interesting Article" posted by jimbopc)

His ideas apply to me.

I think there are probably some people who can eat a high carb/high sugar diet and suffer no ill effects.  But I think a significant percentage of us have the genetics that create the chain reaction tom just described.

My doctor flat out told me that sugar raises your blood triglyceride level.

I wouldn't go back to eating sugar and bread for anything.  Not only does it prevent me from losing weight - but it makes me feel bloated and loagy.  :(  No thanks!

I haven't read the book, but I did the google search and read the reviews about the book. It was quite fascinating.  The only thing that just didn't seem right is when he stated that you could eat (consume) more than you burn and still lose weight as long as you weren't eating any carbs.

His articles particularly point out the refined carbs, but then he says humans should be eating what we were intended to eat, meat, fish, some veggies. From what I've read, he doesn't mention fruit at all. I find it hard to believe that mother nature would supply us with so many wonderful fruits and we shouldn't eat any of them.

I also find it hard to believe that if I continue to eat more than I burn, but all of the calories come from fat and protein that I won't gain weight. That just seem illogical to me.

I do believe he's right about the insulin and the fat storing. The science there backs him up.

I think I'll look for his book at the library and try to make time to read it.

bump

I was hoping to hear more opinions and information about his book and ideas. I really do intend to read the whole book for myself, but would like some input from others who know more about it.

One of the claims in the articles, quoted by the author, was that you could not make small changes in your diet or exercise and then lose weight. Say for instance you continued to eat the same, but added exercise, or just started eating 300 calories less per day and didn't exercise.

I haven't read the book but I do believe that small changes make a big difference.  My example would be my own experience but in reverse.  I when from weighing 165 lbs. to weighing 215 lbs. after a job/lifestyle change altered my normal routine.  I gained those 50 lbs. over a 5-year period equaling an average annual gain of 10 lbs per year.  If you do the math, a 10 lb. a year gain is the equivalent of eating just 100 calories per day above maintenance.  Now my gain was more complex than that, I typically gained weight in the winter and lost weight in the summer but on average it was just a small change, 100 cals., that made the difference.  So, in theory I could have lost the weight over a five year period by eating just 100 cals a day below maintenance or burning 100 cals a day more.  I didn't do it that way, I made big changes and I lost the weight in 25 weeks, but I could have.

Velonews, one of the emags I regularly read, has a weekly column on sports nutrition.  Today's column was about eating to avoid heart disease and was the standard old school info, avoid saturated fats, sodium, etc.  I guess old notions die hard.

I really think it depends on your genetics as to whether you can make a 300 calorie change (either increase exercise or cut calories) and lose weight (by which I mean fat weight)

I think it definitely works for some people.  I heard an interview with Gina Kolata on NPR and iirc, she said that this approach will work for about 10% of the population, based on reviews of obesity research.  That would mean that 90% of have a more complicated formula to figure out. 

The reason it won't work for everyone (I think) is that some of us have genetics with more "system failure" mechanisms.... like our ancestors were subject to severe famines, but survived, and so passed on genes that assiduously work to protect accumulated body weight (energy). 

With current research into hormones, it appears that if one hormone is overridden by modern medicine, a back up hormone steps up to prevent weight loss.  And so on and so on.  That's why none of the "cures" for obesity ever work out.  It's way more involved than just subverting the action of one hormone or one neurotransmitter.

It's like a symphony that we're just beginning to be able to hear.

:)

 

One of the problems that I think a lot of us face is the fact that knowing what we actually burn calorie-wise in a day is impossible.  I think the margin of error is large, probably 300 to 500 calories  (my guess) but it could be even more so in general people will have greater sucess if the stay outside the margine of error.  I would argue that people who strictly maintain a 500 calorie daily deficit and are stuck on a plateau are actually eating at maintenance because of the margin of error.  Others with a 500 cal. daily deficit cpuld be losing more than a pound a week.

TR, what you've said makes perfect sense to me and it has the ring of truth to it. A lot of what I read about this book, I found one article that was a bunch of Q&A's from the author, had the ring of truth to it as well. The part about adding exercise or making small changes just didn't sit right with me.

There are a large number of people who don't gain any weight until they hit their 30's and "settle down". They don't change their eating habits, they simply quit being as active as they used to be. This flies in the face of some of the author's claims.

I would argue that people who strictly maintain a 500 calorie daily deficit and are stuck on a plateau are actually eating at maintenance because of the margin of error. 

You think that?

You don't think the body can 'lower its thermostat', as it were, to save energy and thus retain what it has?

I think that's where the margin of error comes from.  We can never know for sure what we are burning.  I absolutely think the body will "lower the thermostat" to conserve energy but we can't know when or by how much any more than we can ever really know what we burned during that hour we spent at the gym. 

What we can know is that we burned more by going to the gym than we would have burned had we not gone or whether we are eating less than what we used to eat.

What I'm saying is we present the calorie counting, which I'm a firm believer in, as an easy science, burn more than you consume and you lose weight.  But all the variables are unkown.

bump.  im really interested in seeing more opinions about this book.

wow, as it happens i just finished reading this book (it had been on my list all this time and i finally got around to it)

I have to say, I was extremely impressed with all of the science presented

This is a history of the science of obesity research.  The earlier chapters are sort of hard to read if you don't have a science background (at least for me, i wanted to make sure i understood what i was reading and some parts i had to read 2 or 3 times)

But the most incredible thing is how Taube documents obesity research dating back to the 1800s and how for 100 years, the evidence pointed to sugar and starch being the fattening agents in a diet.  But then when cholesterol became associated with heart disease, the medical community sort of had a come to jesus moment where they wanted to preach against dietary fat.  And so fat became the dietary boogieman in the mid 70's and since then we've gotten fatter and fatter as a people.

I'll give you one example that blew my mind from the book:

a 1968 conference on obesity in which navy doctors presented their results:

They fed overweight/obese navy officers a diet that was 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs.  Regardless of the number of calories eaten (range was 1000 to 2800) every single person lost significant amounts of weight. "results are dramatic"

They advised that they considered this to be an extreme approach that was undertaken in these instances in order to save the careers of officers who would fail to pass their physical if they didn't lose weight rapidly and would thus have been discharged from the navy.

This seems mysterious to us (we, who have been misled by every nutrition expert under the sun) until you get into the nitty gritty of the metabolic actions at the cellular level and then it makes more sense.

Not sure if i can distill it into a simple takeaway but i'll try:

If you have glucose circulating in your blood, your body will always choose to metabolize it first (you can't afford to have too much blood sugar circulating - you'll die pretty quickly).  Insulin is the primary means for metabolizing blood sugar.  In healthy people, muscle cells are not resistant to insulin and so will take up the blood sugar when it's available.  Then you'd have the urge to move around if you weren't already active - or you'd be extremely fidgety - your muscles have energy to burn.  In people who are insulin resistant - the caveat is that their muscle cells are resistant, but their fat cells are not.  So insulin is able to push the blood sugar (converted into triglycerides) into fat cells to get it out of the blood.  Once fat cells become insulin resistant, you have type II diabetes and need medical intervention.

If you have no glucose circulating in your blood, your body will break down fatty acids (stored in fat cells) in order to make glucose (mostly for your brain).  Other muscles and organs can use fatty acids for fuel.

Krebs Cycle

Fatty Acid/Triglyceride Cycle

The cells of your body are never static.  These cycles are always occurring.  The rate at which fat is stored versus used is related to the effectiveness of your metabolism at handling carbohydrate.  If you don't metabolize it well (if you are insulin resistant) then your fat cells will continue to store excess blood sugar as triglycerides in fat cells which deprives the rest of your body of the nutrients it needs, and so you will typically continue to feel hungry.

Exercise improves the insulin sensitivity of muscle cells.  But it will also usually make you feel hungrier.  So you need to take that into account.  Exercise makes you feel better, makes your brain chemistry function more effectively, improves your strength, flexibility or endurance and generally improves your health.

If you are insulin resistant, then restricting sugar and starch and engaging in moderate exercise is your best option.

 

This is very interesting. I never got around to reading the book, but I'm going to make it a priority now.

Nomo, I think you distilled this very well. It's been a long time since I studied the Krebs cycle, and how fatty acids and triglycerides work.

Gary Taubes' book has already changed (I should say corrected) the views of a lot of renowned nutritional experts since 2007.  Now in 2009 the experts are wondering how they will go about correcting the current guidelines to fit the actual real science.  Truly interesting times are coming regarding nutrition and the obesity epidemic.  Things are going to change big time in the coming years.

When the new guidelines are published by our governments, web sites like this one will have to adapt.  I mean let's face it, it truly looks like we are completely wasting our times and efforts here.

What do you think ?