salmonread's review against another edition
4.0
Just a wee bit of overkill reading both this & "Why We Get Fat" - I recommend the latter, which is better organized and explains the major points in a clearer way than this book. "Why We Get Fat" is also more convincing than this book overall, though, which is not necessarily what one wants out of these books. I don't want to be convinced, so much as informed. I'm now pretty well-informed that truly convincing science on this subject is pretty hard to come by.
sjj169's review against another edition
3.0
Some of this book rang true for me and then some I just couldn't get on board with.
virginiacjacobs's review against another edition
4.0
This was a very interesting book to read. Basically, it had a few main points:
1. Heart disease and cancers became more common causes of death as death from things like pneumonia decreased (basically, when medical science became smart about things that happen to young people).
2. Cholesterol is poorly understood, and lowering your cholesterol may not actually improve your health (studies indicate that people who lowered their cholesterol had increased risk for cancer). (I always assumed no one ever knew what they were talking about when they were talking about cholesterol because every 10 years or so, whether or not eating eggs was healthy changed. Seriously, scientists, it's an egg! Figure it out!)
3. Sugar is basically terrible for you (no shit!) unless you happen to be active enough to burn it off relatively quickly. (Like low income manual laborers.)
4. Direct quote: obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior (this surprised me). However, the book goes on to discuss...
5. The problem is that fat accumulation occurs because of a disorder in hormonal regulation of fat metabolism that is primarily related to:
6. Insulin regulation. Evidently, when we eat, our body sends two waves of insulin into our systems to digest the food. The first wave happens immediately, and the second wave about twenty minutes later. This infusion of insulin tells our body to stop running on stored energy, because it's got a whole load of new energy coming in to run on. However, our paleolithic bodies are used to digesting tough stuff, so it send in a ton of insulin, and guess what...the easy to digest carbs that we eat today don't need that much insulin, so now our body is all confused and the elevated insulin levels cause us to actually store fat. And this storing of fat actually puts our bodies on a roller coaster of hormones, inciting hunger, even if we've actually consumed enough calories.
I would like to point out that this book strives to be scientific about it's analyses, and offers no actual medical advise or nutrition recommendations per se. So don't read it if you're expecting to learn what you should or should not eat; read it to learn why what you're eating is affecting your body the way it is.
1. Heart disease and cancers became more common causes of death as death from things like pneumonia decreased (basically, when medical science became smart about things that happen to young people).
2. Cholesterol is poorly understood, and lowering your cholesterol may not actually improve your health (studies indicate that people who lowered their cholesterol had increased risk for cancer). (I always assumed no one ever knew what they were talking about when they were talking about cholesterol because every 10 years or so, whether or not eating eggs was healthy changed. Seriously, scientists, it's an egg! Figure it out!)
3. Sugar is basically terrible for you (no shit!) unless you happen to be active enough to burn it off relatively quickly. (Like low income manual laborers.)
4. Direct quote: obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior (this surprised me). However, the book goes on to discuss...
5. The problem is that fat accumulation occurs because of a disorder in hormonal regulation of fat metabolism that is primarily related to:
6. Insulin regulation. Evidently, when we eat, our body sends two waves of insulin into our systems to digest the food. The first wave happens immediately, and the second wave about twenty minutes later. This infusion of insulin tells our body to stop running on stored energy, because it's got a whole load of new energy coming in to run on. However, our paleolithic bodies are used to digesting tough stuff, so it send in a ton of insulin, and guess what...the easy to digest carbs that we eat today don't need that much insulin, so now our body is all confused and the elevated insulin levels cause us to actually store fat. And this storing of fat actually puts our bodies on a roller coaster of hormones, inciting hunger, even if we've actually consumed enough calories.
I would like to point out that this book strives to be scientific about it's analyses, and offers no actual medical advise or nutrition recommendations per se. So don't read it if you're expecting to learn what you should or should not eat; read it to learn why what you're eating is affecting your body the way it is.
mkesten's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent science history and a great indictment of the medical science community. I highly recommend this book to people who struggle with weight regimes.
timeywimeybooks's review against another edition
1.0
This book was all about science-ing really hard! Science so hard that people might not notice he is trying to sell you the Atkins diet. Carbs are bad. Why are some populations skinny despite their high carb diets? Well, maybe they just don't drink that much soda, he says.
Things have changed since the book came out. We now know that highly processed meats were found to be carcinogenic in a study just last year. Of course, that study came out long after the book, but it makes this info all the more dated.
Things have changed since the book came out. We now know that highly processed meats were found to be carcinogenic in a study just last year. Of course, that study came out long after the book, but it makes this info all the more dated.
tsaboca's review against another edition
5.0
Late to the party, but I am glad that i finally read this ( well listened) to this book. I now want to purchase a physical copy so i can use as reference material. I agree with the author's note in the epilogue... It should allow to the relevant folk to see that maybe they need to really look at the evidence.
candacemss's review against another edition
5.0
Late to the party, but I am glad that i finally read this ( well listened) to this book. I now want to purchase a physical copy so i can use as reference material. I agree with the author's note in the epilogue... It should allow to the relevant folk to see that maybe they need to really look at the evidence.
jmcphers's review against another edition
4.0
Like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (another of my favorite books about food), this book is an infuriating read if you're just trying to figure out what scientists are saying these days about what to buy in the grocery store.
In fact, this book meanders well past the boundaries of "What should I eat?" and well into an indictment of the forces that have been driving dietary recommendations and food policy for the last few decades. The central story here--and I hope I'm not spoiling anything that the buttery toast on the cover hasn't already--is how we wound up with a recommendation for high-carb, low-fat diets when no well-constructed study has ever demonstrated such a diet to be healthy.
If you're interested in that story, you can do no better than this finely researched tome. Taubes analyzes studies, interviews throngs of individual researchers, takes apart the political process, and generally makes sure the reader is left with very little faith in the dietary recommendations of even the most trusted establishments.
There's also a lot of fascinating medical information here. Want to know why ice cream is technically a low GI food even though it's basically all sugar? Want to know why you can feel hungry even after eating five times more calories than you need? Want to know how your body turns steaks into olive oil? It's all here, in prose readable to the layman.
I came away from this book solidly convinced that a high-carbohydrate diet is at least partially responsible for what Taubes calls the "diseases of civilization"--obesity, Type II diabetes, cancer, and their ugly friends. I also came away from very disappointed in our scientific process, and wondering if it is even possible to produce a rigorous study on a topic as complex as diet.
This book was missing a few things that would have made it great:
1. While Taubes does an excellent job explaining flaws in the studies that were supposed to demonstrate the health of a high-carb, low-fat diet, he does not follow this act by bringing up better studies that demonstrate the health of the opposite. Most of the evidence that he uses to support the latter is based not on the sort of good science that he demands from the low-fat camp but on the anecdotal evidence of the success of low-carb diets, on an analysis of our current understanding of the processing of various macronutrients in the body, on historical precedent, on population studies, etc. It's convincing, and he does admit that his premises lack the backing of his Ideal Study, but I was still disappointed to discover that science still had no justifiable answer. C'mon, guys, it's been a few thousand years. Can you please just tell me what to eat already?
2. This book is focused almost entirely on macronutriets--different kinds of fats, carbohydrates, sugars, and to some extent proteins. There is no mention of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), of foods whole or not, of ethics, or any other aspect of the extremely complex topic of diet. As far as Taubes is concerned, your diet consists of 12 UNITS OF FRUCTOSE and 15 UNITS OF FAT (SATURATED). Taubes sees that some people get fat and sick on their diets, and aside from a brief section on genetics, seems to think that the only place to look for blame is not in what is eaten or how it is eaten or why it is eaten but only on the largest chemical components of the food. Macronutrients may well be the largest contributing factor, but I'd love to have seen some discussion of the role of the other variables in diet. Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food does a good job discussing this sort of "nutritional reductionism" and the role it's had in creating an overly simplistic view of nutrition that has lead to a great deal of poor food science in the last several decades.
In fact, this book meanders well past the boundaries of "What should I eat?" and well into an indictment of the forces that have been driving dietary recommendations and food policy for the last few decades. The central story here--and I hope I'm not spoiling anything that the buttery toast on the cover hasn't already--is how we wound up with a recommendation for high-carb, low-fat diets when no well-constructed study has ever demonstrated such a diet to be healthy.
If you're interested in that story, you can do no better than this finely researched tome. Taubes analyzes studies, interviews throngs of individual researchers, takes apart the political process, and generally makes sure the reader is left with very little faith in the dietary recommendations of even the most trusted establishments.
There's also a lot of fascinating medical information here. Want to know why ice cream is technically a low GI food even though it's basically all sugar? Want to know why you can feel hungry even after eating five times more calories than you need? Want to know how your body turns steaks into olive oil? It's all here, in prose readable to the layman.
I came away from this book solidly convinced that a high-carbohydrate diet is at least partially responsible for what Taubes calls the "diseases of civilization"--obesity, Type II diabetes, cancer, and their ugly friends. I also came away from very disappointed in our scientific process, and wondering if it is even possible to produce a rigorous study on a topic as complex as diet.
This book was missing a few things that would have made it great:
1. While Taubes does an excellent job explaining flaws in the studies that were supposed to demonstrate the health of a high-carb, low-fat diet, he does not follow this act by bringing up better studies that demonstrate the health of the opposite. Most of the evidence that he uses to support the latter is based not on the sort of good science that he demands from the low-fat camp but on the anecdotal evidence of the success of low-carb diets, on an analysis of our current understanding of the processing of various macronutrients in the body, on historical precedent, on population studies, etc. It's convincing, and he does admit that his premises lack the backing of his Ideal Study, but I was still disappointed to discover that science still had no justifiable answer. C'mon, guys, it's been a few thousand years. Can you please just tell me what to eat already?
2. This book is focused almost entirely on macronutriets--different kinds of fats, carbohydrates, sugars, and to some extent proteins. There is no mention of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), of foods whole or not, of ethics, or any other aspect of the extremely complex topic of diet. As far as Taubes is concerned, your diet consists of 12 UNITS OF FRUCTOSE and 15 UNITS OF FAT (SATURATED). Taubes sees that some people get fat and sick on their diets, and aside from a brief section on genetics, seems to think that the only place to look for blame is not in what is eaten or how it is eaten or why it is eaten but only on the largest chemical components of the food. Macronutrients may well be the largest contributing factor, but I'd love to have seen some discussion of the role of the other variables in diet. Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food does a good job discussing this sort of "nutritional reductionism" and the role it's had in creating an overly simplistic view of nutrition that has lead to a great deal of poor food science in the last several decades.