Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage)
ISBN:9781400033461

This book is great for patients and providers. Evidence shows "the more refined the carbs the more diabetes and heart disease."
Diseases of Civilization are well established. What is not generally agreed is how to educate and or regulate.
Truth in advertising lacks well behind "freedom to eat what you please."
Now that poor health due to diet is bankrupting our system perhaps those who want real change will read this book, and maybe address processed food.
As a medical provider (nurse Practitioner) I believe the case against added salt has been made.

I've read an awful lot of the prior reviewers, and it seems as if they all miss the point.

Here's the conclusion of the book:

The science on Diet isn't in yet.

The author also tends to believe in the "carbs are bad for you" position set, but this is a minor portion of the book.

The book is mostly 630 pages of explaining what we don't really know in the science, and how there are contradictory studies all over the place, and 10 pages worth of opinion at the end.

If you want to read the science, and a summary of what is and (most importantly) what is NOT known about diet, read this.

If you want a simple answer, this book doesn't have one.

Absolutely worthwhile purchase. Answers many questions and is a great reference book as well
Highly recommend it.

First of all the last 100+ pages are footnotes from heavy research. I can't imagine how long it took to compile all the information in this book. It is easy to read in my opinion even though the subject matter is dense and some might think boring. Taubs has a way of making it interesting and relevant.
The bottom line is that we have been fed a bunch of lies regarding what is a healthy diet. He clears this up by going through the research and trust me, you will be blown away by how much false information is out there. I think the proof is in the pudding. Low fat foods are all the craze and the American population is just getting fatter and sicker by the minute. Read this book and it will vindicate fat. You know you would rather eat more fat anyway....... It turns out that isn't as bad as we were led to believe.

Okay, I should maybe have taken one star away because he could have used a good editor. He often repeats himself and goes around in circles and the book could have been shorter. For this reason it may be a hard slog for some.

I know my title seems like hyperbole, but having seen a diabetic family member told to add more carbs to her diet, I mean every word.

This could be one of the most important books you will ever read if you care about your health and longevity. Forget the low-fat nonsense. It seemed to make sense for a while, but it doesn't work. When I was a child nutritionists advised two ways of losing weight. Cutting carbs or cutting fat/calories. From the early seventies the latter one has become gospel. We have eaten less and less fat and - whether in the US or the UK - got fatter and fatter as a nation. The reason? We've been eating more starches, refined carbohydrates and sugars. Before 1900 we ate 5 lbs of sugar a year. Now we eat 135 lbs. A group of very biased researchers, pushing their own agenda, ignored evidence that conflicted with their low fat theories, and used political clout to make them the mainstream.

Some of this will be familiar to followers of Atkins and other low carb diets, but Taubes exhaustively covers the science and the politics. I am 100% convinced about everything he says, except his apparent distrust of exercise, which I believe can have a function of reducing blood glucose rather than reducing calories.

After five years overweight, in five months I lost 25 - 30 lbs by ignoring what my doctor told me about dieting and restricting refined carbohydrates. Now she tells me I'm so good at weight control I should write a book. I still don't give her the details. More and more people are learning this for themselves. The "authorities" will probably be the last to admit it.

Oh, and the government food pyramid is garbage. The Harvard food pyramid is much more sensible if you must trust any of them.