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 fundamentally flawed, as Taubes demonstrates convincingly, and the popular science behind current recommendations about diet and weight loss has been thoroughly compromised by misconceptions and a stubborn refusal to honestly assess the evidence on the part of health "authorities."
There are also possibilities for a valuable social critique based on Taubes' analysis, though he does not address them. Perhaps most important is the social status of the overweight and obese in out society, who have suffered being labeled as "weak-willed," "gluttons," and "lazy." Some health authorities have even gone so far as, and feel perfectly justified in, condoning a form of ostracism and a social quarantine for the overweight in order to confine their negative, unhealthy lifestyles that perhaps, the latest wisdom pronounces, are contagious.
As Taubes shows, all of this is guided, or misguided, by a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature and causes of obesity. A person does not get fat because he or she overeats or does not exercise enough; rather, a person eats more and exercises less because they are fat. Once this basic truth is realized, almost all the current dieting and exercise advise streaming daily from the health industry, including its recent social assault on the overweight, goes out the window and into the garbage where it belongs.
Furthermore, Taubes reveals that the correct methods for weight loss and health have been known for sometime, but have been ignored in the popular media and scientific community, all based on the simple refusal to believe that neither the consumption of fat, overeating, nor a sedentary lifestyle are the causes of obesity. Instead, the cause of obesity is the fat accumulation that occurs from the effects of insulin, excessive quantities of which are triggered by the over-consumption of carbohydrates, indicating that the currently recommendations regarding the best ratios for fat and carbohydrate consumption in a healthy diet have things completely backwards.
This should amount to no less than a revolution in the way we think about dieting and health, even though anyone actually paying to the scientific evidence would already have come to Taubes’s conclusions. It will be interesting to see the popular reaction to this book, assuming there is any at all.