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Here's an interesting (and long) review of Taubes' Why We Get Fat, by Yoni Freedhoff at Weighty Matters.

It's rare that I've had the occasion to read a book whose premises I agree with (that we eat way too many carbs, that they in turn impact on our weights, and that weight-wise exercise isn't much to write home about), but whose arguments make me cringe. Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat met that billing.

Let me start out by stating that I'm quite low-carb friendly and that I readily agree that science has proven that saturated fat has been wrongly demonized by the medical establishment for decades, including somewhat by me when I co-wrote my book in 2006/7 (a guy's allowed to learn, and it was in this spirit that I approached reading Taubes' book). Furthermore, I also agree that carbohydrates, more specifically the refined highly processed ones, contribute dramatically to both obesity and chronic disease and their reduction may well have a role to play in most folks' weight management efforts, and that a myopic view of dietary fat as causal to chronic disease and obesity has likely in and of itself, by means of a consequent dietary shift to carbohydrates, contributed dramatically to the rise in the societal prevalence of chronic disease and obesity.

All that said, I found Why We Get Fat to be an extremely difficult read. Not because the writing wasn't engaging. On the contrary, Taubes is an excellent writer. I found the book difficult to read because for reasons I can't understand, Taubes seems to have decided to abandon journalistic and scientific integrity in place of observational data, straw men and logical fallacy.

Taubes' manifesto is straight forward. Carbohydrates make us fat and they do so independently of the first law of thermodynamics. Forget about calories, you can eat as many or as few of those as you'd like, ultimately weight is purely about carbohydrates.

Continue reading... BUMP

“Taubes’ manifesto is straight forward. Carbohydrates make us fat and they do so independently of the first law of thermodynamics. Forget about calories, you can eat as many or as few of those as you’d like, ultimately weight is purely about carbohydrates.”

Sorry, but Yoni is full of crap. Taubes DID NOT say an individual can eat infinite calories. What he does say, however, is that one can eat the same amount of carbohydrate and gain weight, while an equal amount of fat and protein will not cause the body to store fat. This is because eating large amounts of carbohydrate causes the body to over-secrete insulin from the resulting spike in blood sugar, which in turn causes the liver to store those carbohydrate calories as fat.

Fat and protein, when eaten in those same amounts, do not cause a spike in blood sugar, and thus cause no over secretion of insulin, no triggering of the liver to store calories as fat. Therefore, an equal amount of fat and protein do not make a person as fat as a person eating a similar amount of high carbohydrate food.