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Aug 02, 2008

James rated it:

It is fitting that I finished this book while descending for landing over Newark airport in the middle of intense turbulence. It was the airsickness that the turbulent descent caused that I consider fitting. The sickening feeling one is left with after reading this book is similar: it starts slowly, it rises almost imperceptibly, but eventually, it seizes you almost entirely and renders you incapable of perceiving anything else.

Such is Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, a bo More...

19 comments like (19 people liked it)

Dec 06, 2007

laura rated it:

To tell you the truth I've only read 1/2 this book and am now putting it down. Forget the fact that it spends a good 200 pages attacking a number of U of Minnesota Epidemiologists. I could live with that. I'm always up for intellectual rigor in science.
My problem is this guy does not give you all the information. How do I know? Well, I'm working on a PhD in this field. My master's thesis was on LDL sub-fractions and I have written a great deal about obesity. His oversimplificati More...

7 comments like (12 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2007

Dianne rated it:

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 chan More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2007

Richard's rated it:

I had thought about the theme of this book for awhile -- what explicit scientific research supports our knowledge of nutrition. Taube answers these questions particularly in his contention that refined carbohydrates lead to a myriad of "diseases of civilization". What differentiates this book from the endless advice of health magazines, doctors and pop nutritionists is the specific scientific studies he uses in the construction of his argument and the historical research concerning h More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Belinda rated it:

Holy RESEARCH, Batman. Wow. It seems like Gary Taubes maybe took a lot of guff after his controversial piece in the New York Times, and decided to just let all his critics have it by burying them in tons and tons of data.

I have read about low-carb diets before, but nothing really convincing (to me, anyway, because I loves my bread). This 600+ page whopper really drives the point home that of all the variables in our diets, the one thing that affects the most change when it's reduc More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2008

Jim rated it:

This is by no means an "easy read" nor an easy argument. Taubes reviews the scientific literature relating to diet, obsesity and chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. He tells us why the recent focus on low-fat, high carbohydrate diets is not based on credible scientific evidence. The argument has been that high fat diets cause heart disease. Taubes argues that consuming sugar and refined carbohydrates causes the body to produce excessive insulin which causes fat ret More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2008

Dixonge rated it:

Still in the first part of this book, but so far it is a thorough overview of the history of medical research into diet. It has almost completely shattered my view of the state of government-funded research in America. It is disturbing to discover that everything you have heard about healthy eating your whole life might be totally wrong.

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Bryan rated it:

Examines the science and research behind diet and health.

* Current guidelines in the U.S. advocating low-fat diets to reduce risk of heart disease, hypertension, athersclerosis, etc. are not supported by the science.

* The obesity and Type II diabetes epidemics in the U.S. have as a primary dietary factor refined carbohydrates--not fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, lack of fiber, or lack of exercise.

* Obesity is not a result of input-output imbalance (i.e More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 04, 2008

Sofi rated it:

I love anything that has to do with nutrition. If it wasn't for all those hard chemistry classes I probably would have pursued a degree in nutrition. The information in this book is fascinating. The author makes a good case for today's dietary problems including obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc. The culprit, he argues, is a constant diet of refine carbohydrates. It isn't the calories that matter as much as our body's response to the glucose in those "bad" carbs. He also discus More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Tucker rated it:

Honestly, I never finished the book. At first I thought it was incredible, and the explanation of how our culture came to embrace the food pyramid and the switch to processed carbo-loaded foods was fascinating and infuriating. But like any good contrarian, as I got further into the book I started to question many of the authors sources too. It's too one sided. I'd like a little more give and take even if it ultimately ended up with the same conclusion. With the one sided format you start to More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 22, 2008

Justine rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 26, 2008

Lala rated it:

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 faili More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2008

Stephan rated it:

Required reading for all US citizens.

Get off the low-fat, high-carb train because it's killing you. Why is it that we've been following the nutrition "experts'" advice for three decades now in the US, yet diabetes and obesity are skyrocketing? Why does their advice tell us to eat things that are very different from what our bodies evolved to thrive on? Hmmm, maybe because they're WRONG?

Taubes is a correspondent for "Science" magazine, one of the m More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 16, 2008

Jack rated it:

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 i More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 16, 2008

Pcallist rated it:

I read this 500 page tome in 2 days. Resisted starting to re-read because I promised it to others. This is by outstanding science journalist Gary Taubes. I had so many light bulbs going on while I read this that I was almost blinded. I'm a chemist and I have taken a course in chemical thermodynamics. His treatment of 'all calories are not created equally' was revelatory. For a long time the nutritionists argument that because you can extract (by testing with a bomb calorimeter in a lab) 9 calor More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 24, 2007

Karin rated it:

This is NOT a diet book (as one might imagine from looking at the cover)... it's an quietly revolutionary treatise by a very accomplished science journalist. It's a very dense book that requires a lot of thought, especially from somebody like me with only cursory background in biology. Nevertheless, I find it absolutely fascinating. Taubes not only undermines a lot of the basic nutritional wisdom we all grew up with, he details the historical evolution of scientific thought about nutrition in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2012

Colie! rated it:

This was a very thorough analysis of the history of diet in the U.S... a little too thorough at times. Once you've been reading the same science over and over, you just want to yell "OK, I GET IT! CARBS CAUSE AN INSULIN RUSH WHICH CAUSES A BUNCH OF OTHER HORRIBLE THINGS!" But I'm more of a fiction reader, and I know science relies on thoroughness, and so I appreciate it. Just for future readers, maybe take it a chapter at a time, or don't be afraid to skip around.

With that s More...

0 comments like

Sep 28, 2011

Cathy rated it:

This book turns everything we thought we knew about good nutrition on its ear. For starters, the idea that you have to burn the same number of calories that you eat every day to avoid gaining weight is a myth. You think you can burn off that 500-calorie dessert you just ate? You would have to run for miles..and miles...and miles-- in a word, it's impossible. So is it hopeless? No. It's not the number of calories (though I suppose it's possible to overdo), it's the KIND of calories.
More...

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Sep 12, 2011

Philip rated it:

Taubes is an unbelievable researcher. Obviously with any book quoting studies, data and conclusions can be manipulated, however his ability to pull examples and studies from many different disciplines and time periods have thoroughly convinced me that sugar in more than small amounts is very, very bad.....tobacco smoking bad.....at least when is comes to chronic disease. It also convinced me to substitue fat calories for sugar/carb calories. I have lost 15 lbs so far and feel great.....just f More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 01, 2011

Austin rated it:

One of the most frustrating things about my first year of residency has been obesity. Both doctors and patients feel helpless and frustrated by it. I've heard this book mentioned multiple times in articles about the subject and after reading the author's NYT magazine article I decided to give it a shot:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazi...

This is a long, relatively dense, thoroughly researched book. Taubes is a career science writer - he doesn't have a special supplemen More...

1 comment like

Feb 04, 2011

Bill rated it:

My new motto is "145 by July," meaning I would like to trim 50 pounds of fat accumulated over 20 years in approximately six months. In the process, I am hoping to see a reduction in my blood pressure and the level of triglycerides in my bloodstream to a more acceptable level. For anyone who subscribes to the conventional wisdom about dieting, this is a truly Quixotic aspiration.

Gary Taubes, in Good Calories, Bad Calories, attempts to turn the conventional wisdom on its a More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 22, 2010

Mindi rated it:

{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" More...

2 comments like

Jan 15, 2011

Michael rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 25, 2008

nimrodiel rated it:

Have you ever wondered what drives the health industry in touting what is correct to eat for a good healthy lifestyle? Have you ever wondered why common knowledge tells us that fat is bad, carbohydrates are good, and that to have a healthy weight you should eat less and exercise more? In Good Calories, Bad Calories, author Gary Taubes tried to give answers to these questions, as well as showing how this advice may not be right.

The book is divided into three parts:

—Part on More...

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Jun 23, 2010

Chrissy rated it:

Nothing 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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2009

Meredith rated it:

All my life, everything I learned about nutrition focused on low-fat diets. Supposedly, a low-fat diet was the grail to good living. So why did 30 years of a "healthy" low-fat diet give me elevated blood sugar and high cholesterol? Why do I feel and look so much better after 3 months on a low-carb, high-fat diet?

Taubes does an excellent job of using historical and modern research to explain why the low-fat dogma has been embraced by the medical community and the government, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

Jim rated it:

This is probably one of the most important books to read regarding what we eat. It presents some incredibly compelling and convincing evidence for why the "conventional wisdom" on diet is flat out wrong. The impact of following this "common sense" advice has been quite tragic and goes far beyond obesity: diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimers are all affected as well. At the very basic level, Taubes argues that not all calories are equal, fats are not unhealthy, obesi More...

0 comments like

Oct 01, 2011

Dave rated it:

A dense, devastating and extremely well argued polemic in support of the low carbohydrate alternative. Hard work to take in nonetheless as this is very academic stuff.

I suggest you start with his other, more accessible books first. This one will exhaust you as he traces the way the dietary paradigm was engineered and defended despite the seemingly obvious conclusion that high calorie consumption does not cause obesity not will 'dieting' make you slim.

In relation to what More...

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Jul 31, 2011

Duffy rated it:

I've often been asked what's the best way to lose 10 lbs quickly, usually by someone who is getting ready for some major event. A few times, I've answered: "You could cut off one of your legs." For some reason, this answer never goes over that well. And yes, its not as funny as I first thought, but it does have a point.

Of course, most people mean they want to lose some subcutaneous fat. That is why most people ridicule the early weight loss on a low carb diet: it's only More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2011

Jason rated it:

This book is a tough read but well worth it if you want to know what is happening in your body when you eat. A calorie is not a calorie. All weight gain and loss is hormonally driven. If you are pressed for time and don't want to know all the details I would highly recommend the prologue and the epilogue. That will give you enough to eat properly, assume your ideal weight and never be hungry again.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)