When Good Calories, Bad Calories (GCBC) was published in 2007, it rocked the public health world with a medical-textbook-non-fiction-thriller mashup that made an incredibly powerful argument for the idea that a low fat diet doesn't make you thin or prevent heart disease. I, like many other people interested in health and nutrition, went through the proverbial stages of denial to acceptance to praise..."This is bullsh&%....This research must be cherry picked....This isn't bad....It is incredibly thorough....Great literature cited....Damn, maybe he is onto something?"
I was a senior in college at the time I came across this book. Reading it was shocking. The message was unapoligetically brash and the literature cited was laughably enormous, with the makings of an outrageous David vs Goliath themed hollywood blockbuster. The protagonist, a cocky journalist touting the annoyingly commercial, made-for-late-night-informercial line: "everything you know about nutrition is WRONG."
But the message was sexy for someone like me. And it made sense.....Using physiology to explain why we lose or gain weight, not simply arithmetic of calories in and out. I was used to journalists writing a nice summary of one new study in the New York Times, a tiny little leaf on the gigantic redwood of dietary research. Along comes Taubes's 447 page tome on the history of medical and dietary research as it relates to human health. I was intrigued. I sent him a cold email as a wide-eyed graduate student looking for some advice, and he graciously replied. Years later, we are still good friends.
I was a senior in college at the time I came across this book. Reading it was shocking. The message was unapoligetically brash and the literature cited was laughably enormous, with the makings of an outrageous David vs Goliath themed hollywood blockbuster. The protagonist, a cocky journalist touting the annoyingly commercial, made-for-late-night-informercial line: "everything you know about nutrition is WRONG."
But the message was sexy for someone like me. And it made sense.....Using physiology to explain why we lose or gain weight, not simply arithmetic of calories in and out. I was used to journalists writing a nice summary of one new study in the New York Times, a tiny little leaf on the gigantic redwood of dietary research. Along comes Taubes's 447 page tome on the history of medical and dietary research as it relates to human health. I was intrigued. I sent him a cold email as a wide-eyed graduate student looking for some advice, and he graciously replied. Years later, we are still good friends.
Gary Taubes at my house in Rhode Island, after one of his lectures.
Now, 13 years after What if it's all been a big fat lie? appeared in the NY Times for the first time, people are following suit. Now we see articles like these, which are essentially word for word from
various chapters of GCBC:
The Government's Bad Dietary Advice - NY Times
Ending the war on fat (PDF) - Time magazine
Butter is back - NY Times
Don't fear the fat: Experts question the saturated fat guidelines - NPR
Now, in what seems like a dream come true for the readers of this blog, the dietary guidelines is listening.
Dr. Krauss, the former chairman of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines committee, said that the advisory panel’s emphasis on overall dietary patterns was “a tremendous move in the right direction.” As part of that move, the panel dropped a suggestion from the previous guidelines that Americans restrict their total fat intake to 35 percent of their daily calories.
The panel also dropped a longstanding recommendation that Americans restrict their intake of dietary cholesterol from foods like eggs and shrimp, which we have known doesn't affect blood cholesterol levels since the 1950s. “For many years, the cholesterol recommendation has been carried forward, but the data just doesn’t support it,” said Alice H. Lichtenstein, the vice chairwoman of the advisory panel and a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University.
(Youtube video link)
(Youtube video link)
Now, thanks to Gary's decade of perseverance, we have the Nutrition Science Initiative, co-founded with Dr. Peter Attia, powered by massive funding to run the most rigorous trials we have ever seen in the field of dietary research.
I look forward to the hollywood ending of this future film.
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