Taubes' 'Why we get Fat, and what to do about it'

**Portia**

Got this bad boy delivered fom Amazon the other day and I have to say I am loving it. I attempted reading 'The Diet Delusion' last year but found it too heavy. This book is more concise and I am finding it fascinating. I especially love chapter 11: 'A primer on the regulation of fat'; I never fully undertood the carb/insulin dynamic until now. I think that the various nutrition lessons I have taken from blogs, other books, and forums on nutrition like this, has come together somehow with the reading of this book.
In the intro to the book, Taubes encourages the reader to have a critical mind while reading the book. I too think that this is a good policy when reading any health-based materials. The problem is I am not yet well-read enough to have any real criticism of anything he says in the book and would be interested to see if there are people out there that take issue with any of his beliefs and if so why...?

Red Cortina

I remember after I finished the Diet Delusion I ate hardly any carbs...
I'm no nutritionist but my take on it is that the whole obesity issue is a lot more complicated than the fact that you eat carbs and put on weight. The pointers to that being all the traditional cultures who have consumed lots of carbs and still aren't over weight and have none of the DOC.
Kurt Harris talks about a hypothesis whereby the types fats in your diet might be involved in disregulating the mechanism whereby fat is stored in some of the comments he has made on other blogs but can't find these links at mo....:(

**Portia**

Oh interesting, what groups are these that eat primarily carbs and are healthy?

So, is he saying that the cause of obesity may be that we are eating bad fats and they are wreaking havoc with our metabolism? What fats would he consider to be at fault?

rocky

A review: http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/01/book-review-gary-taubes-why-we-get-fat.html

Taubes blames carbs for cancers now? wow.

If you want a low carb, high fat diet, go for it, but do not base it on this book.

Why We Get Fat is certainly a book that will appeal to the masses as it pseudo-scientifically preaches that carbs are a magic food and that if you eat almost none of them - the diet he recommends includes 20 grams (less than an ounce) a day - you'll magically lose weight. Perhaps more appealingly, Taubes and Why We Get Fat also preach that you can eat as much fat and protein and you want and you'll never gain. Of course that's pretty much identical to the original Atkins' diet, and virtually all of the diets that Taubes himself references. You think that maybe, were it that easy the world would already be skinny? That low-carb would have continued its huge surge from the early 2000s (or the mid 1800s)? Why didn't it? Not because it doesn't work as for many folks it does - by means of folks on low-carb diets naturally eating, wait for it, smaller numbers of daily calories because they're not as hungry. No, ultimately I think that low-carb diets didn't continue to surge because most folks don't want to adhere to them as by their very definition they meet the classic definition of a "diet" - blind restriction and deprivation - things most folks don't want to live with for a lifetime.

El_Dangeroso

Yep, Taubes won't let go of the carbs thing, which is disappointing, considering the other part of the book, how body-fat is highly regulated by hormones just like any other part of the body and that obesity is a result of a breakdown of this highly regulated system is spot on and he was one of the first people to highlight this in a non-academic book. I especially love the chapter title 'Thermodynamics for Dummies' a pointed attack at people who missed the point from his first book, like a Harvard physics graduate would not know the laws of thermodynamics!

No mention at all of omega 6 fats.:(

Kurt Harris' latest post sums it up for me:

There is no such thing as a macronutrient.

Talking about 'carbs' and 'fats' given what we know now is reductionist in the extreme.

**Portia**

I thought he was dismissive of carbs as having any part to play in weight loss, and not saying that we should never eat them ever, even when we do not want to lose. And isn't that the focus of the book -what causes weight gain and how to lose it? I don't think Taubes really sees himself as a health guru but is more interested in debunking the 'fat makes you fat' myth.

Red Cortina

**Portia** wrote: »

Oh interesting, what groups are these that eat primarily carbs and are healthy?

So, is he saying that the cause of obesity may be that we are eating bad fats and they are wreaking havoc with our metabolism? What fats would he consider to be at fault?

The Kitavans have a high proportion of carbs in their diet. The Whole Health Source blog discusses them a bit.

I think it might have been during the interview that Kurt Harris did with Jimmy Moore that he aluded to his own hypothesis for why the disregulation of your body fat set point occurs. But this is recalled from my shoddy memory so just ignore it!!

What fats would he consider to be at fault? Trans or hydrogenated fats...