Excellent science history and a great indictment of the medical science community. I highly recommend this book to people who struggle with weight regimes. ( )

Rethink everything you know about what is healty eating. Extremely well-researched, beautifully written. ( )

Does a better job taking down conventional wisdom--carbs good, fat bad--than supporting the "alternative hypothesis" that carbs actually make us fat, mainly because most of the arguments Taubes uses against standard nutrition guidelines, like "this or that study doesn't infer cause and effect," rely on the same bad inductivist philosophy he invokes to support his hypothesis. Still, his detailing of the hormonal explanations of obesity and the relevant science were interesting and compelling (although, as he often says, that stuff has been known for a long time). ( )

50% done, so much detail! This book, combined with others have really encouraged my bias toward paleo centric diets. ( )

I assumed that this book is yet another fad diet, so took no interest in it until recently. Now, I see that is is a summary of research and anecdote over the last 150 years, showing that much of our conventional wisdom about diet is not supported by evidence. Nice neat theories about things such as fat and cholesterol being bad are way too simplistic. Supporters of those theories succumb to the confirmation bias tendency. Along that same line - there is a paucity of data supporting the current widely promulgated dietary recommendations.

A few snippets:

"Since 1984, the evidence that ... statins, are beneficial - proposition number one - has certainly blossomed, particularly regarding people at high risk of heart attack." "Saying that statins reduce heart disease risk by lowering cholesterol, ... is like saying that aspirin reduces heart-disease by reducing headaches." (Page 77)

A study by WHO concluded that "heart disease mortality was declining worldwide, but that decline was independent of cholesterol levels, blood pressure, or even smoking habits." (Page 79)

"Perhaps the simplest example of this kind of erroneous deduction is the common assumption that the cause of high blood pressure and hypertension is excess salt consumption." (Page 145) I have read one book that also mentioned that, for most people, salt is not the villain that modern medicine portrays it to be. (It was delightful reading and is: [b:Lot's Wife: Salt and the Human Condition|1064430|Lot's Wife Salt and the Human Condition|Sallie Tisdale|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1266479397s/1064430.jpg|1051073]). There is a more recent book that I have not read which might relate. ([b:Salt: A World History|2715|Salt A World History|Mark Kurlansky|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347586566s/2715.jpg|73206])

161-163 HDL is protective (Page 161-163). "But the 'good cholesterol' in HDL would be diminished by eating more carbohydrates" (Page 167) Perhaps I am an exception to this conclusion because I eat a high carbohydrate diet and have high HDL. The next few pages go on to explain that it dividing cholesterol into 'good' and 'bad' or HDL and LDL is a simplification that might be problematic. Krauss found 7 discrete subclasses of LDL and they have different properties. Large fluffy LDL is less dangerous. More fat leads to more fluffy, which leads to less heart disease risk.

"The Mythology of Obesity" - what an intriguing title for a chapter. He points out that the current obesity epidemic occurred at the same time as the 'fitness revolution.'

A very interesting book that got me doing some additional searching on Ketosis vs Ketoacidosis, that was even more interesting.

Surprising to me was that "Ketosis is often incorrectly described by nutritionists as 'pathological.' This confuses ketosis with the ketoacidosis of uncontrolled diabetes. The former is a normal condition; the later is not." (P 319) I did a search for Ketosis vs Ketoacidosis, and found a wealth of material confirming what I just read.

Consumption of carbohydrates require additional water, consumption of fat does not.

There is even an explanation of why obesity is most common among the poorest part of the population. (p 235)

Insulin is not just something that type 1 diabetics are missing, and type 2 diabetics are insensitive to. It is portrayed as a hormone that is much more heavily involved in shuttling energy containing molecules around in the body.

"By 2004, ... One in ten adult Americans had Type 2 diabetes - one in five over the age of sixty." (page 401)

I came to think of insulin very differently. It stated that although we think of fat as largely static, insulin is continually shuttling triglycerides into and out of adipose tissue. (I still wonder if insulin actually controls both directions, or if, as in so many body systems there are multiple hormones regulating it. Wikipedia support the book's claim of multiple actions.)

Here is more information on the various actions of insulin:
"Insulin acts on various cells in the body to accelerate facilitated diffusion of glucose into cells; to speed conversion of glucose into glycogen...; to increase uptake of amino acids by cells and to increase protein synthesis; to speed synthesis of fatty acids...; to slow the conversion of glycogen to glucose...; and to slow the formation of glucose from lactic acid and amino acids..." ([b:Principles of Anatomy and Physiology With A Brief Atlas of the Skeleton, Surface Anatomy, |3116081|Principles of Anatomy and Physiology With A Brief Atlas of the Skeleton, Surface Anatomy, |Gerard J. Tortora|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348237293s/3116081.jpg|2478404] page 671) Whew! Insulin does a lot!

Now that a week has elapsed since reading it, it gets moved up to 4 stars because I have been musing on this book ever since.

I also read and reviewed his book: [b:Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It|8727466|Why We Get Fat And What to Do About It|Gary Taubes|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320563681s/8727466.jpg|13600443], where I make some additional comments on the anti-carbohydrate thesis. ( )