NY Times nutrition columnist Gina Kolata (previous posts here) reviews Gary Taubes’ new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease (Knopf September, 2007), which was previewed earlier here. Kolata observes:
His thesis, first introduced in a much-debated article in The New York Times Magazine in 2002 challenging the low-fat diet orthodoxy, is that nutrition and public health research and policy have been driven by poor science and a sort of pigheaded insistence on failed hypotheses. As a result, people are confused and misinformed about the relationship between what they eat and their risk of growing fat. He expands that thesis in the new book, arguing that the same confused reasoning and poor science has led to misconceptions about the relation between diet and heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, dementia, diabetes and, again, obesity. When it comes to determining the ideal diet, he says, we have to ìconfront the strong possibility that much of what weíve come to believe is wrong.î [. . .]
Taubes convincingly shows that much of what is believed about nutrition and health is based on the flimsiest science. To cite one minor example, thereís the notion that a tiny bit of extra food, 50 or 100 calories a day ó a few bites of a hamburger, say ó can gradually make you fat, and that eating a tiny bit less each day, or doing something as simple as walking a mile, can make the weight slowly disappear. This idea is based on a hypothesis put forth in a single scientific paper, published in 2003. And even then it was qualified, Taubes reports, by the statement that it was ìtheoretical and involves several assumptionsî and that it ìremains to be empirically tested.î Nonetheless, it has now become the basis for an official federal recommendation for obesity prevention.
But the problem with a book like this one, which goes on and on in great detail about experiments new and old in areas ranging from heart disease to cancer to diabetes, is that it can be hard to know what has been left out. [. . .[
. . . I kept wondering how he would deal with an obvious question. If low-carbohydrate diets are so wonderful, why is anyone fat? Most people who struggle with their weight have tried these diets and nearly all have regained everything they lost, as they do with other diets. What is the problem?
On Page 446, he finally tells us. Carbohydrates, he says, are addictive, and weíve all gotten hooked. Those who try to break the habit start to crave them, just as an alcoholic craves a drink or a smoker craves a cigarette. But, he adds, if they are addictive, that ìimplies that the addiction can be overcome with sufficient time, effort and motivation.î
Iím sorry, but Iím not convinced.
John Tierney comments, too.
I’ve had my email address for a long time, so I get a receive a lot of spam, which I ignore.
It’s been a week now since the Craig Biggio Farewell Tour drew to a close during the final eighth of the Stros’ disappointing 2007 season. With the end of the season, the tremendously successful Biggio-Bagwell era in the history of the Stros has officially ended. Accordingly, it’s a good time to step back and assess where the Stros are and where they are going.
